From the moment the story broke, news reports (following the lead of the police, this was not primarily a media problem but a police problem) described an item which had been found in a Starbucks bathroom as "a homemade bomb." Not a "suspected" bomb, but a "bomb." The original police spokesperson claimed, without any apparent qualification, that this "bomb" "would have caused damage if it exploded.''

Within a day, that claim had escalated to a bomb which was "powerful enough to dismember or kill someone had it gone off." Again, based on what, it isn't clear; it's not as if they had detonated it in a special chamber and had seen what would happen.

Many of you probably already know the denouement. Three days after the "bomb" was found, and one day after it was revealed that "no explosive material" was present, the final conclusion was announced -- the "bomb" was a flashlight with corroded batteries. Interestingly, the initial stories in the press (which were not reflected in the broadcast stories that I heard on multiple channels) described the device as "a portion of a flashlight and a fuse"; the "fuse", we can speculate without actually having seen it, was just one of those little lanyard attachments at the end to make it easier to carry and/or hang from a hook.

The damage, however, has surely been done, as millions of people around the country received one more dose of fear and terror calculated to increase their acceptance of the loss of their rights. I have yet to even hear the updated true story on any of the national news channels who broadcast the original story, but, if and when I do, it's a safe bet I won't be hearing about it on "high rotation" for several days as I did the "bomb" story.

In case you're wondering, the headline reads "bomb 'scare'" and not "'bomb scare'" for a reason. It's my way of indicating this was not a "bomb scare" where someone calls the police or a newspaper and announces there's a bomb someware that is going to go off, something that would traditionally be called a "bomb scare." This was something quite different - an attempt by government, in this case the police force of San Francisco, to scare the people of their city (and the entire country) with a story that was patently untrue from the start. It's not that it couldn't have been a bomb, but the idea that they knew it was a bomb, and a powerful one at that, was simply a lie.