Imagine:

The police want to receive no reports about crime.

The hospitals want to hear nothing about sickness and injury.

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) wants to learn nothing about controversial opinion, see and hear nothing about extreme violence and its gruesome results, or ponder criminal activity.

Ha-ha! None of these similarly ridiculous statements could be true, could it?

Well, one is. The TSA, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security and is responsible for screening passengers boarding planes, “detecting, deterring, and defeating terrorist or other criminal hostile acts targeting U.S. air carriers, airports, passengers, crew, and when necessary, other transportation modes within the US’s general transportation systems” and conducting “comprehensive inspections, assessments and investigations” of passengers “to determine their security posture” wants to hear no “controversial opinion” on, say, argument for and against suicide bombing and jihad. So it has banned “certain websites from the federal agency’s computers, including halting access by staffers to any Internet pages that contain ‘controversial opinion’, according to an internal email obtained by CBS News.”

The email was sent to all TSA employees from the Office of Information Technology on Friday afternoon. It states that as of July 1, TSA employees will no longer be allowed to access five categories of websites that have been deemed “inappropriate for government access.”

These are:

• Chat/Messaging

• Controversial opinion

• Criminal activity

• Extreme violence (including cartoon violence) and gruesome content

• Gaming

The email does not specify how the TSA will determine if a website expresses a “controversial opinion.”

There is also no explanation as to why controversial opinions are being blocked, although the email stated that some of the restricted websites violate the Employee Responsibilities and Conduct policy.

The blowing up of aircraft in flight is criminal, extremely violent, and gruesome. Are TSA employees to keep their minds off these facts? If so, is it because they will be harmed by knowing them?

And on whose parental instructions? Janet Napolitano’s – the stunningly smart Secretary of Homeland Security?

We may never know.