Terrorist watch list reaches 1 million names

Here's a doosey that's bound to be ignored by the mainstream press: The "terrorist" watch list reached 1 million people, reports Barry Steinhardt on the Huffington Post today.

Steinhardt and the ACLU held a press conference today about the milestone at the National Press Club. ACLU keeps a running tally here.

Stienhardt writes about who accompanied him today:

Jim Robinson, a former assistant attorney general for the Civil Division at the Justice Department, who flies frequently and is often delayed for hours despite possessing a governmental security clearance; and Akif Rahman, an American citizen who has been repeatedly detained, shackled, separated from his family, and interrogated at the U.S.-Canada border when traveling for his business.

Based on the government's own report, the "terrorist" watch list grows by 20,000 names per month. Now do you believe there are 1 million people who want to kill Americans?

This story should rise to the top as George W. Bush's most egregiously evil acts of government. But who's keeping track? We all remember those gallant statements that 9/11 would never affect our freedoms.

Well...Matthew Rothschild over at The Progressive has done a tremendous job of documenting the widespread assaults on civil liberties since 9/11 in the magazine and in his book, You Have No Rights: Stories of America in the Age of Repression.

A new report by the Denver Post reveals that our government is relying on secret informants no different than repressive communist regimes, Bruce Finley reported on June 28:

Hundreds of police, firefighters, paramedics and even utility workers have been trained and recently dispatched as "Terrorism Liaison Officers" in Colorado and a handful of other states to hunt for "suspicious activity" — and are reporting their findings into secret government databases.

Meanwhile, Democrats (including Barack Obama) are MIA on the issue having granted the president a green light on domestic spying (including telecom immunity) last week.