Here is an excellent column that pinpoints one of the major problems I have with the eternal and all-consuming War on Terra� but have never personally been able to say so succinctly:

Is that America’s highest goal — preventing another terrorist attack? Are there no principles of law and liberty more important than this? Who would have remembered Patrick Henry had he written, “What’s wrong with giving up a little liberty if it protects me from death?

But no. The sad reality is I live my life everyday with a President who openly misleads Americans, openly breaks laws and offers not apology but defiance, and who expects me to trust him, but not my neighbots. The morning that the airplanes flew into the Twin Towers, I knew deep in my heart that the world, and the United States of America, would never be the same place again. I knew that the men occupying the White House would twist the fateful attack that day to their own ends, launch wars, and feed the oil-industrial monsters with my tax money. But I never thought that my fellow Americans would sit idly by as Bush and company methodically and incessantly destroyed so many civil liberties, constitutional protections, and basic laws of the land, more concerned with Lindsay Lohan’s latest lover than the loss of basic rights to privacy, transparency in government, and the separation of powers. Merry Christmas America.