On the Ball

I must be missing something here, because this seems impossibly dumb, even for the US government:

Four senators are seeking to force the Obama administration to blacklist the Pakistani Taliban, a day after the failed Times Square bomber pleaded guilty and admitted getting training from the group.

The senators, all from New York and New Jersey, said Tuesday they would introduce a bill requiring the State Department to designate the Pakistani Taliban a "foreign terrorist organization."

Wait, what? Wasn't the Taliban designated a terrorist organization, oh, I dunno, on 9/12/01? Or was it just the Afghan Taliban, while the Pakistan faction was left untouched, presumably because of deep-seated ideological and strategic differences over exactly how to bring "death to America"?

Or is this -- and I'll go out on a limb here -- a way for certain pols to posture and preen over some newfangled legalistic wrinkle, something that will inevitably (and inadvertently, of course) legitimize the eventual government overreach. Predictably, some dumb sod will find himself flown to a Syrian dungeon in the dead of night, because Chuck Schumer wanted to look tough for a few minutes. Stranger things have happened, yet always the choice in figuring out motivations seems to come down to "unforgivably stupid" vs. "stupidly malicious".