The Pendragon's Hall

Mort Zuckerman has a fantastic editorial in this week's US News and World Report. Discussing the flap over the so-called "domestic spying" he notes that even one of the 9/11 hijackers slipped through the cracks because NSA officials were "worried about being accused of domestic spying." He's right: while I certainly am not interested in a President Hillary Clinton having these kinds of powers, what can we really do? If Bush did not take this initiative, so easy with modern technology, and another attack occurred, Democrats in the Congress would demand an investigation and would excoriate him over this. Does this mean I want the federal government to have the power to intrude into the lives of average citizens? Of course not. But I do want them to have the power to prosecute the war on terror and keep the average citizen safe. It's the least they could do for all the money we feed them. Zuckerman correctly observes that "We must find the right balance [between prosecuting the war on terror energetically and abusing real civil rights] in the war against terrorism, whose proponents only goal is to destroy America." And Zuckerman takes the cake as the currently-only member of the mainstream media to recognize this.