Pretty bizarre, huh? We'll never really know exactly how many extremists were pushed to violence by the feds, but it's probably a lot more than people think:

The spying game wasn't all it was cracked up to be for Craig Monteilh, a convicted criminal recruited by the FBI to investigate the march of radical Islam into Southern California. His endless talk of violent "jihad" so alarmed worshippers at the local mosque, that they took out a restraining order against him.

Monteilh spent 15 months pretending to be Farouk al-Aziz, a French Syrian in search of his religious roots. He prayed five times a day at the Islamic Centre in Irvine, Orange County, wearing white robes with a camera hidden in one of its buttons, and carried a set of car keys that contained a secret listening device.

The enthusiastic attempt to catch local Muslims discussing terror campaigns backfired, however, when community leaders went to the police with fears that the suddenly devout young man, who got up to pray at 4am, had become a radical in their midst.

The terror case Monteilh had been helping build against Ahmadullah Niazi, the brother-in-law of Osama bin Laden's bodyguard, collapsed in September, when the bungling informant revealed that his FBI handlers had instructed him to entrap his potential target and told him that "Islam is a threat to our national security".

Yesterday, as details of his efforts to persuade Niazi to blow up buildings became public, leading US Muslim organisations said they have suspended all contact with the FBI in protest against the excesses of agents who are secretly, and in some cases illegally, monitoring mosques.

"The community feels betrayed," Shakeel Syed, executive director of the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California, an umbrella group of more than 75 mosques, told The Washington Post. "They got a guy, a bona fide criminal, and obviously trained him and sent him to infiltrate mosques... It's like a soap opera, for God's sake."

Man Who Set Self on Fire Was FBI Informant

MPP:

Two police officers pleaded guilty Thursday to manslaughter in the shooting death of a 92-year-old woman during a botched drug raid last fall. A third officer still faces charges.[..]

The charges followed a Nov. 21 "no-knock" drug raid on the home of Kathryn Johnston, 92. An informant had described buying drugs from a dealer there, police said. When the officers burst in without warning, Johnston fired at them, and they fired back, killing her.

Fulton County prosecutor Peter Johnson said that the officers involved in Johnston's death fired 39 shots, striking her five or six times, including a fatal blow to the chest.

He said Johnston fired only once through her door and didn't hit any of the officers. That means the officers who were wounded likely were hit by their own colleagues, he said.[..]
Assistant U.S. Attorney Yonette Sam-Buchanan said Thursday that although the officers found no drugs in Johnston's home, Smith planted three bags of marijuana in the home as part of a cover story.
The case raised serious questions about no-knock warrants and whether the officers followed proper procedures.

Consortium News: For longtime observers of political terrorism in South Florida, the aggressive reaction to what may have been the Miami group’s loose talk about violence, possibly spurred by an FBI informant posing as an al-Qaeda operative, stands in marked contrast to the U.S. government’s see-no-evil approach to notorious Cuban terrorists who have lived openly in Miami for decades.

The Gaelic Starover: Power-failure

MyDD: This mutt's military experience revolves around being escorted in and out of Iraq for a USO type visit and then returning to her air conditioned office to spew this sort of filth onto the American people.

Copeland Institute for Lower Learning: North Carolina school bans books under pressure from religious nuts.

The Existentialist Cowboy and David Swanson offer their thoughts on "staying the course."

The Week's Cartoons from Bob Geiger'

The Moderate Voice : U.S. Troop Cuts By Fall 2006 May Be In The Offing.

I thought it was just love, but:

"The Chicago Police Department is warning officers their cell phone records are available to anyone -- for a price. Dozens of online services are selling lists of cell phone calls, raising security concerns among law enforcement and privacy experts. Criminals can use such records to expose a government informant who regularly calls a law enforcement official."