Sedition in America

Laura Berg is a nurse working for the Department of Veterans Affairs in New Mexico. In September last year, she wrote a letter [second from bottom] to a local newspaper criticising the Bush Administration's handling of Hurricane Katrina. Here's an extract:

The risk of hurricane disaster was clearly predicted, yet funds for repair work for the Gulf States barrier islands and levee system were unconscionably diverted to the Iraq War. Money and manpower and ethics have been diverted to fight a war based on absolute lies!

[...]

Bush, Cheney, Chertoff, Brown and Rice should be tried for criminal negligence. This country needs to get out of Iraq now and return to our original vision and priorities of caring for land and people and resources rather than killing for oil.

Katrina itself was the size of New Mexico. Denials of global warming are ludicrous and patently irrational at this point. We can anticipate more wild, destructive weather to occur as a response stress of the planet. We need to wake up and get real here, and act forcefully to remove a government administration playing games of smoke and mirrors and vicious deceit. Otherwise, many more of us will be facing living hell in these times.

For writing this, Berg's work computer was seized and she was investigated for inappropriate use of government equipment. When no evidence was found that she had written the letter at work, her boss fell back on the sedition charge, saying that

The Agency is bound by law to investigate and pursue any act which potentially represents sedition

The case has now reportedly been referred to the FBI.

Berg has not been charged, and I do not expect her to be. But it is an example of the changing face of America when criticism of government policy and a call to action (implicitly, to speak up and vote the bums out of office) attracts this sort of response.

(Hat tip: Daily Kos).