Terror tube: In another example of why the Patriot Act is bad for your freedom, the FBI has entrapped a Pakistan-born, naturalized U.S. citizen who sold New Yorkers satellite television packages that carried Hezbollah’s al Manar channel, which is outlawed in the United States even though it is accessible for free over the Internet. On top of that, due to the recent warfare between Israel and Lebanon, the cable service Javed Iqbal sold to an FBI informant posing as a customer didn’t work — so the FBI guy never was able to see al Manar.

Can anyone spell First Amendment? Is there a list somewhere of all the TV channels banned by the gubmint?

Note, too, this channel banning is being done by a government that for the past 40 years has beamed Radio Marti at Cuba. First, it used a huge balloon called Fat Boy that flew over Key Largo to shoot propaganda at Cubans who don’t get enough propaganda at home, and when Castro blocked that signal, the U.S. government responded by beaming the signal from an airplane that just flies around near the communist island nation.

But you’d better not try to tune in al Manar on your Sony Trinitron within the continental United States — or else. Seems that because al Manar broadcasts hate talk (like Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly, only in Arabic), but especially because it broadcasts bank account numbers where you can wire money to support your local Hezbollah gunfighter, it’s deemed illegal, ipso facto, with no discussion.

Who makes that decision? Is it Congress? I don’t think so, or we would have seen the hearings on C-Span. Is it the Supreme Court? Nope, ’cause this is the first case of its kind. Is it Bushco, as led by Attorney Genital Alberto Gonzalez? You bet. The Patriot Act is a catch-all that allows the Bush administration to do whatever the hell it wants and your civil liberties be damned.

I went to al Manar on the Internet, but the English-language version was not accessible due to recent bomb damage. On the Arabic site, however, it looked like there was a story about the president of Syria, Hezbollah’s Nasrallah, George Bush wagging his finger and some scenes from the war. Curiously, on the right side of the Google page was an advert for software that enables a PC to stream video from 3000 TV stations in 78 countries.

Something just ain’t right here. Read more about the case of hapless satellite TV sales guy Javed Iqbal in the New York Daily News.