Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell has spent the past day apologizing for his state's homeland security department, which had been distributing "anti-terrorism" bulletins listing upcoming environmentalist and LGBT protests — at a cost of $125,000 to taxpayers, naturally.

Rendell claims he only recently learned that his homeland security department had been paying a Philadelphia firm, the Institute of Terrorism Research and Response — doesn't sound like a bullshit firm that lives and dies by unnecessary government contracts at all, does it? —to track threats to its states "critical infrastructure and key resources."

Who would threaten these valuables? Why, the environmentalists and the gays! And Muslims, Jews, black people, fur-hippies, anarcho-hippies, plain vanilla hippies, etc.:

The 12-page bulletin that was issued Aug. 30 included a list of municipal zoning hearings on Marcellus Shale natural gas drilling, a forestry industry conference and a screening of the documentary "Gasland" as events likely to be attended by anti-drilling activists.

Aside from the drilling-related events, the bulletin mentioned other potential security concerns that it said could involve "anarchists and Black Power radicals."

It listed demonstrations by anti-war groups, deportation protesters in Philadelphia, mountaintop removal mining protesters in West Virginia and an animal rights protest at a Montgomery County rodeo.

It also included "Burn the Confederate Flag Day," the Jewish high holidays and the Muslim holy month of Ramadan as potential sources of risk.

These bulletins that the "Institute of Terrorism Research and Response" produced weren't supposed to be made public, of course. But they were! Now the contract's been canceled, which is too bad. Fucking hippies.

[Gov. Ed Rendell photo via AP]