At least he didn't try to take pictures of public landmarks (while black).

Then again, it makes some sense. There's been a complaint about the guy, and it turned out to seem innocent, but they record it just in case there turns out to be a pattern. Think about, say, Mudd's honor code. If a prof catches a student cheating, they're required to report it to the honor board even if they come to a mutually agreeable settlement without the board's help. That way a student can't get away with cheating a little bit here and there but always slightly below the radar of a central authority. I'm not sure what sort of special treatment he's in for on the DHS watch list - probably more than is deserved - but the fact that the incident was recorded makes sense.

Hmm... I'm very mixed on this. The free-speech-at-all-costs part of me is like, "Hey! Take him off the watch list!" but on the other hand, he wrote a very suspicious sentence in isolation on a crossword puzzle. I can understand his seatmate's concern and I'm reassured that it was taken seriously. Since he's not a published writer and since the line was not surrounded by any other dialogue or scene-setting, he very easily could have been making his explanation up--although really, I'd be more concerned about sanity issues than terrorism because why would a terrorist write "I think this is a bomb" on newspaper? I feel like the authorities were in a bit of a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't... if the guy ends up not being innocent, they would be crucified for not noting anything. Assuming (as is more likely) that he is innocent, then its a civil liberty violation. IMHO, this is one of the gray areas where civil liberty and security clash. I don't really know enough about the ramifications of being on the Watch list to know whether I think the security benefit is worth the trade-off.

I tried to click through the link to the article at the Chronicle and am getting:

"No such article.

We're sorry, but the article you requested is not currently available on HoustonChronicle.com.

If it's an older article that you had bookmarked, you may be able to find it in the archives.

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Obviously, they wouldn't pull the story for content......right?