Patriot Act

From the company that brought you the C programming language comes Hancock, a C variant developed by AT&T researchers to mine gigabytes of the company's telephone and internet records for surveillance purposes.

George Orwell was born in 1903 and died in 1950 after a long struggle with tuberculosis. Early in life he learned to be suspicious of authority and to hate empire while developing a compassion for the poor. In 1936 he joined the Spanish Civil War, like thousands of volunteers who joined the Lincoln Brigade to fight on the side of the republic against fascist Gen. Francisco Franco and his Falange Party. More than half of the volunteers died in battle. Orwell was injured and nearly died.

The civil war in Iraq has stranded 2 million Iraqi refugees in neighboring countries - and Washington says that up to 7,000 of them may be resettled in the United States this year. But which ones? During a recent trip to the Middle East, I talked with many refugees who seemed to deserve resettlement in the United States, but may never get it. Even though they have been brutalized by the factional fighting in Iraq, the U.S. government might label them "supporters of terrorism."