More evidence of the seriousness with which Dubya's crew pursues the War on Their Political Opponents Terror. A prosecutor in Detroit testified to the Senate last fall that Ashcroft's showboating was interfering with the case. The response from the Justice Department?

Convertino is seeking damages under the Privacy Act, alleging he has been subjected to an internal investigation as retaliation for his cooperation with the Senate and that information from the internal probe was wrongly leaked to news media. ...

Convertino also accused Justice officials of intentionally divulging the name of one of his confidential terrorism informants (CI) to retaliate against him.

The leak put the informant at grave risk, forced him to flee the United States and "interfered with the ability of the United States to obtain information from the CI about current and future terrorist activities," the suit alleges.

Well, they've got to do something to shut down all those carping comments. Heck, here's Nathan Newman carping about federal budget cuts for first responders to a terrorist attack. Ingrate.

How can you say that they're not serious? They're talking about indefinitely detaining people at Guantanamo, without trial, with no independant evaluation of the evidence, and effectively on their own whim. And they're poring through personal information on everyone who traveled to Las Vegas last December, using Patriot Act provisions to bypass legal probable cause requirements. How can you get more serious than that?

Convertino link via Josh Marshall...