Bush administration: Terrorists pay their credit card bills

According to the Bush administration, if you pay off too much on your credit card bill, you become a suspected terrorist.

Seriously. You don’t have to make overseas phone calls, or buy too much ammonium nitrate, or subscribe to the wrong magazines. All you have to do is pay off more on your credit card than usual and — Zap! — the good folks at Homeland Security will tie up your payment till they clear you.

Don’t believe it? Read all about it from the Providence Journal.

An excerpt:

The balance on their JCPenney Platinum MasterCard had gotten to an unhealthy level. So they sent in a large payment, a check for $6,522.

And an alarm went off. A red flag went up. The Soehnges’ behavior was found questionable.

And all they did was pay down their debt. They didn’t call a suspected errorist on their cell phone. They didn’t try to sneak a machine gun through customs.

They just paid a hefty chunk of their credit card balance. And they learned how frighteningly wide the net of suspicion has been cast.

After sending in the check, they checked online to see if their account had been duly credited. They learned that the check had arrived, but the amount available for credit on their account hadn’t changed.

So Deana Soehnge called the credit-card company. Then Walter called.

When you mess with my money, I want to know why,” he said.

They both learned the same astounding piece of information about the little things that can set the threat sensors to beeping and blinking.

They were told, as they moved up the managerial ladder at the call center, that the amount they had sent in was much larger than their normal monthly payment. And if the increase hits a certain percentage higher than that normal payment, Homeland Security has to be notified.

And the money doesn’t move until the threat alert is lifted.

We watched “Good Night, and Good Luck” last night, and — as I was supposed to — I was struck by how well it resonated.

Paranoid government types casting a wide net for “enemies,” desperately playing the fear card, casting suspicion on good people for reasons they refuse to reveal, branding anyone who dares disagree with them as consorting with the enemy…

I guess too many of us have forgotten our history. So here we go again.