I got so much trouble on my mind. Refuse to lose.

Lots of stuff out there in the ether.

• To borrow a phrase, America's chickens have come home to roost. Several federal agencies sponsored a summit last week with immigrant groups to recruit aid in intelligence gathering. And guess what they heard.
  

  "We are going to ask you to open up your communities to us," said Ronald Sanders, an assistant national intelligence director, and the son of an Egyptian immigrant mother.
  
  The officials got an earful in return — about immigration and hiring rules and foreign policies that make life harder in immigrants' old countries. The intelligence agencies' own practices also came under criticism: extraordinary rendition, holding prisoners at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, harsh interrogation practices that some say amount to torture.
  
  "Basically they've scared people," said Amina Khan, of the Association of Pakistani Professionals and an attorney formerly with the U.S. Energy Department.

• ID this! Yesterday 40 people came out on a workday morning to attend a public hearing in Erie on the federal Real ID Act. The testimony from the one defender of the real nightmare of Real ID, who was from the Coalition for a Secure Driver's License, sounded something like this:
  

  "9/11, drug dealers, September 11, illegal aliens, terrorists, terrorists flying planes into buildings, be afraid."

  
  That's not an exact quote, but it was something like that. I was trying to ignore what he was saying.

• ID this, part deux! Here we go again. Last week PA House Republicans introduced legislation to require photo identification at the voting booth. Their press conference sounded something like this:
  

  "The illegal alien vote, stop fraud, dead people, Chicago, illegal aliens, close the borders, 9/11."

  
  That's right, one rep even managed a 9/11 reference, saying, "Can you imagine if the 19 9/11 hijackers had been allowed to vote?"
  
  These people are mad. There is no evidence that this type of voter fraud is happening, so why put up more roadblocks to voting? Maybe they're afraid of the voters. Frankly, they should be.
  
  The Erie Times News, Philadelphia Inquirer, and Patriot News of Harrisburg all opined against this ridiculous idea.
  

Andy in Harrisburg