And The Justice Department Wastes Its Time Investigating Me?

The number of American anti-government militia and "patriot" groups, largely dormant since their heyday in the mid-1990s, mushroomed at an "astonishing" rate last year, raising "grave concern" about the potential for future domestic terrorism, according to a new report by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The nonprofit civil rights organization, which tracks the hate movement and anti-government groups, counted 512 militias and related groups in 2009, up from 149 groups the year before. And, it said, the movement has added a layer of racism largely absent a decade ago.

On Friday January 15, 2010 the U.S. Department of Justice sent two law enforcement officers to my home to interview me concerning the following gravely concerning activities and statements I made on this blog, My Daily Struggles, concerning a federal official:

1. Three-and-one-half years ago, in July 2006, I revised a Wikipedia article about a federal official. I added three facts to the biographical account of the official: facts that are public information and readily accessible on the internet. The facts I added have never been deleted, nor did the Justice Department request that I delete these revisions.

2. I had praised the federal official effusively on my blog (noting that the individual had graduated third-place in law school), and referred to that official in several posts.

3. I disclosed on my blog personal facts about the official that are public information and readily accessible on the internet.

4. I quoted from that individual's official pronouncements, pronouncements that are public information and readily accessible on the internet. The pronouncements in question were highly critical of -- and, no doubt, embarrassed -- the U.S. Department of Justice, the department that sent two officers to interview me and silence me on January 15, 2010.

5. I had sent a copy of a book I had written to the official's spouse several years ago; the book was praised by a Professor of History at The Pennsylvania State University, Paul Lawrence Rose.

Such were my crimes against the state. Doesn't the Justice Department have more important things to do than investigate a blogger who writes admiring posts about a federal official?

And these are the people protecting the homeland?