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"...some of the research being done is unusual, it's different, it's new, it's got -- there may be people who see this as cutting edge and maybe beyond certain limits that they're comfortable with."

That's Lawrence Di Rita, Special Assistant to the SecDef, speaking yesterday on the termination of the Policy Analysis Market, characterizing some of the research DARPA performs to support initiatives like the Total Information Awareness program.

The Policy Analysis Market was planned to be the Blogshares of Middle Eastern politics, a fantasy marketplace for wagering on assassinations and the like. Here's MSNBC's report.

This is the sort of uncomfortable research American taxpayers are now funding via DARPA (on five-count Iran-Contra felon Poindexter's watch, no less).

Laughably, this effort was purported to have some counterterrorism value. In another case of poor timing (is Rove napping?), its termination arrived within hours of cutting the air marshal and airport screening programs, simultaneously with renewed Al-Qaeda hijacking threats.

The new Homeland Security Department, indicative of the Bush administration's hopelessly ineffectual approach to counterterrorism, is the butt of an extraordinarily expensive national joke that simply isn't funny anymore.

Transcript via Cryptome.

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