It is happening now. They’re monitoring everything that goes through the big telcos’ big pipes. At the moment, that’s legal.

If they weren’t doing it, they wouldn’t have needed to keep it secret, and they wouldn’t have a problem obtaining warrants.

This has nothing to do with listening to AQ or potential terrorists. In fact, they had these taps in operation before 9/11, so one can’t even argue that these mechanisms work. Nor has there been any other plot executed or plausibly planned.

There have been, since 1990, two operations that succeeded, both directed at the WTC. There’s been one credible threat disrupted–the guy trying to smuggle explosives in from Canada for Y2K day.

9/11 happened despite this monitoring regime being in place. The Y2K thing was stopped by a well-trained customs agent.

It’s past time to stop being scared. We are living in the safest time period in American history, with no threats, at all, to our security. Sitting in quaking fear of attacks by stateless, powerless individuals that take place once a decade is wacky. It’s doing exactly what they want. Do you realize the ROI of the 9/11 attack? They spent all the resources they could on that –about $100,000. And look what they got back. A trillion dollars spent making America a symbol of hate for many Muslims around the world, an image of the US as a heartless killer of innocent civilians in the pursuit of control of oil. Every step of the way Bush has done exactly what bin laden wanted.

Shouldn’t we attack the Republicans on their social stands, and on the economy and the war, and at the same time stand strong on general defense and vigilance?

I don’t understand this paranoia about George Bush listening on your phone lines. Everyone knows that won’t happen.

Because that was his petulant performance objecting to amendments today.