Censorship and the 9/11 report
On the Homeland Front

Assasination Betting Pool

Not wanting to be left out of the reality show trend, the Pentagon had a really bad idea.

The folly of running America like a business, part 14.

The Pentagon has abandoned a plan to create a futures-style market that would let investors bet on the likelihood of terror attacks and other events in the Middle East, a senior lawmaker said Tuesday

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner, R-Va., said he spoke by phone with the head of the agency overseeing the program, Tony Tether.

"We mutually agreed that this thing should be stopped," the Associated Press quoted Warner as saying. Tether is the head of the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, known as DARPA.

A day earlier, Democratic Sens. Ron Wyden of Oregon and Byron Dorgan of North Dakota lit into the Pentagon for its role in launching the "Policy Analysis Market," a futures-style trading system that would let participants bet on the likelihood of assassinations, terror attacks and other geopolitical events. The site invites participants to begin registering on Aug. 1, with the market set to begin trading on Oct. 1.

"Spending taxpayer dollars to create terrorism betting parlors is as wasteful as it is repugnant," the senators wrote in a letter to John Poindexter, head of DARPA's Information Awareness Office. "The American people want the federal government to use its resources enhancing our security, not gambling on it."

One objection to this plan that occurred to me that I haven't seen mentioned was the possibility of insider trading: Get paid to commit crimes! Bet on a long shot and then assasinate the guy or blow up the bridge your very own self! Who needs a job? Terrorism for fun and profit!

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