US seeks "excruciating pain" in new weapon: With the Bush administration's virtual endorsement of torture as an intelligence-gathering strategy, should the US government be developing weapons that can cause "excruciating pain" in targets up to two kilometers away? So-called Pulsed Energy Projectiles (PEPs) "fire a laser pulse that generates a burst of expanding plasma when it hits something solid, like a person," potentially knocking them off their feet. (Via Cursor.)

Immigrant lockdown: According to TalkLeft, the department of Homeland Security is making 1700 immigrants who are applying for residency to wear electronic monitoring bracelets. While none of them has been accused of a crime, each of them, it appears, will be forced to wear the tracking devices day and night, just like convicted sex offenders. (Via Peek.)

Who's the terrorist? The ACLU. At least that's what Bill O'Reilly says. Leave it to the rightwingers to group law-abiding immigrants with convicted rapists, a civil-liberties group with the folks who toppled the World Trade Center.