Molly Ivins, Ted Kennedy Suckered by Claim that Homeland Security Visited Student Who Requested Mao Book

From Tim Blair:

. . . a post on who got suckered by the bogus story that a University of Massachusetts student who ordered Mao’s “Little Red Book” by interlibrary loan was visited by agents from the Department of Homeland Security.

The story has now been admitted to be a hoax.

Blair cites us on the fact that James Carville got suckered, and then links to a column — a long hate-Bush rant by Molly Ivins.

Ivins was suckered too.

And so was Ted Kennedy. In an op-ed piece in the Boston Globe, Kennedy asserted the following:

Just this past week there were public reports that a college student in Massachusetts had two government agents show up at his house because he had gone to the library and asked for the official Chinese version of Mao Tse-tung’s Communist Manifesto. Following his professor’s instructions to use original source material, this young man discovered that he, too, was on the government’s watch list.

Think of the chilling effect on free speech and academic freedom when a government agent shows up at your home — after you request a book from the library.

Incredibly, we are now in an era where reading a controversial book may be evidence of a link to terrorists.

Something is amiss here. Something doesn’t make sense. We need a thorough and independent investigation of these activities.

The Congress and the American people deserve answers now.

It’s a sort of litmus test: who hates George Bush so much that they will accept any bogus story that reflects badly on his administration?