A terrorist behind every bush?

NOW WE KNOW why France's team captain lost his cool in the World Cup finals and France lost the trophy to Italy.

Terrorism.

Zinedine Zidane, who is of French and Algerian ancestry, head-butted an Italian player who insulted him. Although Zidane in an interview Wednesday would not say what words provoked him, a lip reader hired by the Times of London claims Marco Materazzi called Zidane "the son of a terrorist whore.''

That's pure trickle-down politics. From the White House to the soccer pitch, "terrorist" has "cooties" and "your mother wears combat boots" flat beat as the top playground potty-mouth slur for the 21st century.

Who's surprised? The Bush administration has been scattering the word like ticker tape on a Manhattan parade. Old McDonald left the farm for the NSA, and now it's here a terrorist, there a terrorist, everywhere a terrorist.

Before the Fourth of July holiday, The Times reported that California's homeland security office had tracked garden-variety demonstrations. How dare people gather outside the Canadian Consulate and protest the vicious clubbing of baby harp seals? What is Democratic Rep. George Miller thinking, speaking out against the war to all those people in Walnut Creek? Who do those women in Santa Barbara think they are, rallying outside a courthouse to support an antiwar protester?

Personally, I think real, hard-core Al Qaeda-grade terrorists have nothing but contempt for touchy-feely "We Are the World" American do-gooder protesters; after all, didn't George Bush say terrorists hate our freedoms?

California's homeland security operation is an office of 53 people, running mostly on federal dollars, and 53 people have to keep finding something to do to justify their paychecks. Arnold Schwarzenegger's office hurried to put a lid on this. The governor believes that any inappropriate information gathering like this is unacceptable; it's a one-time-only occurrence that won't happen again; and come look at the 80 or so reports -- after we take out the stuff we don't think you should see.

Which turned out to be a lot. There were hints that the state was keeping an eye on the Minutemen, and something about "suspicious conversations" at a San Diego mosque, but large passages on page after page had been blacked out. A TV cameraman wasn't allowed to shoot video of the whole lotta nothing. Can't take a chance that terrorists might have X-ray vision.