I don't disagree with the notion that when given massive amounts of intelligence information, an informed, experienced individual has some sort of mental algorithm that kicks in to let them sift out information of particular importance. The brain's an amazing organ, and one of its most amazing traits is the ability to collate information without actual conscious intervention. As the article pointed out, sometimes we just don't know (consciously) which points are relevant, and what we're left with are simply too many variables to come to a real decision.

That being said, I simply don't believe that there's a single person in the Bush administration who has that sort of experience, regarding either intelligence on terrorist plots or, indeed, on anything regarding their appointed spheres of influence. At best you may be able to trust their 'gut feelings' on "how can I use the media today to gain a partisan political advantage?" or "I sure could use some crazy justifications for oppressing all opposition in this country - freedom's such a pain in the ass when Democrats have it, too!" Those instincts, I'm sure they have in spades - they try them out and get feedback on them all the time. But since, despite their best efforts, there hasn't been an effective attack by Iraq-trained terrorists on American soil, poor Chertoff simply lacks the expertise.

But regarding his gut feeling that this might be a good time to raise the alert level, I completely agree - for him and his owners, it probably is.

Tragically, oh-so-often, those of us who aren't fond of the overlarge prison population, or having our tax money spent on TWO idiotic, unwinnable wars at once, or who actually believe that the government should have no hand in our personal lives have our opinions shouted down by those who point to (for example) elderly grandmothers in high-crime neighborhoods who hate drug dealers.

"Lookit Nanna Mae! She doesn't like drug dealers in her neighborhood! Are you gonna tell Nanna Mae they should be there forever because you want to legalize drugs?!"

Well, no. Because that's not the issue. Drive-by shootings, no matter what happens to drug laws, will be illegal. Gangs, street crime, selling drugs to kids, all that - still illegal, no matter what drugs we legalize or decriminalize. Only someone who's never bothered to give the issue even 10 minutes of thought would think that taking drugs off the streets and putting them in your convenience stores would somehow cause those things to remain at the same level, or increase. Hell, with street dealers losing pretty much all of their business (and thus, income) I fail to see how that's going to make them even more well-armed.

Not that that's even a cogent point of this debate, anyway. Clearly (as the Nanna Mae examples show) when we debate drug laws and their application in the inner-cities, we're not supposed to talk about justice, government rights vs. individual rights, or anything like that - we're just supposed to talk about what'll make the neighborhood more pleasant for harmless old ladies. In those cases, repressive laws that're used as an excuse to oppress a good percentage of the country's population are A-OK, 'cause Nanna Mae's afraid of the alternative.

But it doesn't take a genius on the Nanna Mae level to realize the simple formula that's at work here:

1) No space in existing prisons, so the government pays a huge corporation to build new, impressive prison.

2) Area that's not quite able to NIMBY-lobby the prison out of their town at least gets a load of well-paying (comparatively) new jobs opening up.

3) Prison is rapidly filled with real criminals, and then some drug-users (remember, the issue here is not VIOLENT OFFENDERS, Nanna Mae.)

4) Those cycled out (because of the fact that they were in at all) are unable to get jobs that can actually pay enough to live on. They've been in, they don't want to go back, but their two alternatives are to either sell drugs, because you can do that even after you've been in prison, or to use them in order to forget how horrible your life is - either way, you're soon back in prison for quite a while because (as was pointed out in the story) the whole place is a drug-free school zone.

5) Prisons fill, then overfill, return to step 1. Government wins (no matter what you think of taxes, when everything else is cut, NO ONE will fight against upping the taxes a bit to keep those dangerous pot-smokers locked up), Halliburton et. al. wins, nobody loses but felons, and they can't vote anymore, so who cares? (Oh, and Republicans win, when they can use the names of those felons to purge about 50,000 other voters in Democratic-leaning areas.)

So pardon me if I don't think of Nanna Mae as the be-all-end-all of debate on the drug war. Perhaps we need harsher penalties for crime that's actually part of a campaign to destroy an area. I think we could all agree on that, but to say that repressive drug laws are cool because Nanna Mae refuses to believe otherwise just doesn't wash.

Don't lose the kind of humor in the last line. Being liberal is so often like being in a race where the person who gets the most offended the fastest wins (unless you're a white male, in which case you're a whiner!) and thanks for ignoring those reactions.