Think, dammit.

If you haven't, it takes place in DC, about 50 years down the line. The plot is based around this Orwellian premise that the police can determine in advance whenever a murder is about to be committed--"Precrime." At that point, they descend into the scene and arrest the would-be murderer before he/she can go through with it.

So what the hell does this have to do with politics? Glad you asked.

I just came across this article, which discusses how the FBI has been interrogating anti-war protesters in an effort to stem possible violence at anti-Bush rallies, etc. There's just one problem: nobody's done anything yet.

From the article:

F.B.I. officials are urging agents to canvass their communities for information about planned disruptions aimed at the convention and other coming political events, and they say they have developed a list of people who they think may have information about possible violence. They say the inquiries, which began last month before the Democratic convention in Boston, are focused solely on possible crimes, not on dissent, at major political events.

<-----snip----->

The unusual initiative comes after the Justice Department, in a previously undisclosed legal opinion, gave its blessing to controversial tactics used last year by the F.B.I in urging local police departments to report suspicious activity at political and antiwar demonstrations to counterterrorism squads. The F.B.I. bulletins that relayed the request for help detailed tactics used by demonstrators - everything from violent resistance to Internet fund-raising and recruitment.

In an internal complaint, an F.B.I. employee charged that the bulletins improperly blurred the line between lawfully protected speech and illegal activity. But the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, in a five-page internal analysis obtained by The New York Times, disagreed.

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Actually, I may have been too hasty. I mean, if John Ashcroft says it's Constitutional, that's good enough for me.