Belong to the ACLU? The Sierra Club? Greenpeace?

...then the FBI has a warm and cozy interest in you, you prospective terrorist, you.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The FBI has thousands of pages of records in its files relating to the monitoring of civil rights, environmental and similar advocacy groups, the Justice Department has acknowledged.

The organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union and Greenpeace, are suing for the release of the documents. The organizations contend that the material will show that they have been subjected to scrutiny by FBI task forces set up to combat terrorism.

The rest of the story here

Challenge Grant

Short form: The Hardy Girls Healthy Women, a local non-profit group dedicated to helping girls realize lives where being a girl is secondary to being a person (this is my spin; theirs is more elegant), has the opportunity to produce and tour "Ugly Ducklings," a play by Maine playwright Carolyn Gage, which looks at the tangled web of homophobia, bullying, and teen suicide. They intend not only to tour the show, but to produce a documentary film about the play which will then be submitted to HBO, the Sundance Festival, the American Educational Film and Video Festival, the Maine International Film Festival, and put to various good uses within the community.

The Hardy Girls website, which discusses the project in depth, is here

The letter, which is ...astonishingly eloquent... is ( behind the cut )