Please Just Make It Stop

There goes the Department of Homeland Security again, protecting us from sanity.

On the heels of a report that the no-fly list is protecting airline passengers from the presence of air marshals on their flights, we learn that the U.S. terrorist watch list is keeping us safe from Nobel Peace Prize laureates:

Nobel Peace Prize winner and international symbol of freedom Nelson Mandela is flagged on U.S. terrorist watch lists and needs special permission to visit the USA.

Which is so ridiculous even Condoleezza Rice is embarrassed:

“This is a country with which we now have excellent relations, South Africa, but it’s frankly a rather embarrassing matter that I still have to waive in my own counterpart, the foreign minister of South Africa, not to mention the great leader Nelson Mandela,” Rice said.

Note, however, that no matter how idiotic the consequences of having no-thought lists for banning people, nobody in the Bush Administration seems to have considered ditching them as ineffective and counterproductive.