DEFINING TERRORISM DOWN: Must-read piece from the Denver Post on how the Bush administration is fudging the terror-conviction numbers. Excerpts follow:

In the two years following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the federal government has dramatically increased the prosecution of crimes it says are related to domestic or foreign terrorism, and more than tripled its rate of convictions for those offenses compared with the two years before the attacks.

But the median sentence for those convicted of international terrorism during that time is just 14 days, while some convictions the government has labeled as related to counterterrorism resulted in a sentence of community service or drug rehabilitation, according to government data to be released by a private research group today. …

[Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse] data shows that convictions in cases the Justice Department says are related to international terrorism jumped 7 1/2 times compared with the two years before the attacks–from 24 to 184–but the number of individuals who received sentences of five or more years actually dropped, from six in the two years before the attacks to three in the two years that followed. …

In what authorities describe as a strategy of prevention, potential or suspected terrorists are being charged since the 2001 attacks with minor nonterrorism crimes to get them off the street or out of the country. …

In a prominent case in Denver, for example, three men who allegedly attended an al-Qaeda training camp were charged with an immigration offense–lying on a visa application. Although the men are not being prosecuted for terrorism, the FBI considers it a terrorism-related case.

But that discretion has also led to a terrorism classification for crimes that have no apparent terrorist link….

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Via Hit & Run.