I remember hearing the anti-Bush crowd howling about how, before 9/11, the FBI had dropped the ball, failed to connect the dots, screwed the pooch, overlooked the clues, and generally failed to do the footwork required to nail the hijackers before they actually hijacked anything.

Asking someone some questions is part of how these things are found out.

I don't know the details of Paretsky's examples, since they are anecdotal, but there is probably more to these stories than she writes.

A cloud of unknowing surrounds St. Johns College in Santa Fe, Andrew O'Connor and his long interrogation by Albuquerque police and the Secret Service in February 2003. O'Connor was removed from the college library by police after he made negative comments about President Bush in an online chat room. But since he was ultimately released without being charged, he clearly had not threatened the president's life. What he said, how the police and Secret Service knew he said it, and the gag order on the college to keep people from talking about his arrest, are all shrouded in silence.

Similarly, we don't know what a New Jersey library user was reading the day another patron called the police to report that the man was looking at a foreign-language Web page. But the man was hauled off for questioning, held without being allowed to call his home or a lawyer, and then released without being charged. We also don't know why the FBI arrived at a California student's home hours after she talked on the phone about bomb icons in a video game she was playing.

I tried a quick research on the cases she is talking about.

Andrew O'Connor. I did not get the same story from any two sources, and O'Connor seems to change it as he goes along too. At one point his story seems to be someone used his password and made threatening remarks about the President on a chat line. Apparently when he himself was online later, he was doing a job search when the cops came. Other versions say he said something critical but not threatening about Bush on a chat line. I wish I had an actual police report or news account other than tons of hearsay.

The New Jersey library story is different every place I read it, too. I can only find second and third hand reports since apparently the library is worried about the gag order.

Without more details, more comment is pretty much pointless. Obviously, if everyone criticizing Bush on the Internet were hauled off, this board and the Internet would be a very quiet place. What is being left out of these stories?

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Does anyone else notice the irony of thousands of people bitching endlessly on TV, the newspapers, and the Internet about how dissent is being suppressed?