The State of the Union

Couldn't make it up if you wanted to...

Sister Ardeth Platte, 72, and Sister Carol Gilbert, 60, came back from two weeks out of town to find letters from the Maryland State Police saying they had been wrongfully listed as suspected terrorists in a federal database in 2005-2006.

"To be labelled a terrorist is really very hard to hear and to accept, when your whole life has been one of loving nonviolence," Platte said.

Maryland State Police have sent letters to a total 53 activists wrongfully labelled as terrorists, inviting them to look at their entries in the database -- after which the files would be deleted.

The Dominican nuns broke into a US nuclear missile silo in Colorado in 2002 and painted crucifixes with their own blood -- earning Platte and Gilbert prison sentences of 41 and 33 months respectively.

"If they can label us as terrorists, they can label all kinds of people as terrorists," Gilbert said. "So then people become afraid to speak out against what the established government might be saying -- and that is the demise of democracy."

Isolated incident? Well, at least one ranking prelate's been surprised to find himself, however fleetingly, on the "no-fly list"... and let's not even get into all the difficulties over religious worker visas.

And speaking of "blue nuns," a 106 year-old expat sister living in Rome has announced her choice for next month's vote.

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