You better watch out, you better not cry ... cause Michael Chertoff is coming to town. [NOT!]

Who knew that the Department of Homeland Security monitors interlibrary loan requests? A student at UMass found just that after ordering a copy of Mao's Little Red Book.

Here's the story in the Standard-Times, out of New Bedford, MA.

One other note: how is it that "interlibrary" is a word??? Shouldn't it be hyphenated? And if it's not even hyphenated, shouldn't the acronym be "IL", not "ILL"? (though I suppose the latter is kind of cool).

***ADDENDUM***

NOT!

Hat tipped to Matt for being the first to find that this one isn't true [comments].

And here's the story on it in Saturday's Globe.

Some questions this all makes me wonder about:
-Why did the Standard-Times publish the story without actually being able to interview the kid? This is almost like the kind of second-hand stuff that might make it to the front page of the NYT -- i.e. 4/21/03, "Illicit Arms Kept Till Eve of War, an Iraqi Scientist Is Said to Assert". The story ran with no evidence; it was just the word of two professors, who were in turn taking the word of a student. Somehow if professors say it it makes it true? I thought it must've been that the paper had more info to substantiate the story that they just weren't able to use in the article for whatever confidentiality/legal reasons. But now it seems there was definitely nothing more they had to work with.
-Why did they not attempt to contact the Department of Homeland Security for comment, or at least not make any indication in the story that they had?
-Why did the Department of Homeland Security not contact the Standard-Times and make them retract it? Surely their news-trackers saw that this story was getting picked up in various places.