Richard Lacayo writing for Time Magazine on The War Comes Back Home:
On Thursday, Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee defeated a White House attempt to give the CIA and the Pentagon new and unusual authority to investigate U.S. citizens. It would have been the first time in U.S. history that these two institutions were openly authorized to probe into the lives of Americans. In a closed-door meeting of the Intelligence Committee, Democrats rejected a measure that would have allowed the CIA and the Pentagon to issue "national security letters" requiring Internet providers, credit-card companies and other institutions to cough up the personal and financial records of their customers. Says a U.S. intelligence official: "Periodically since 9/11, the folks on the Hill have asked, 'Geez, what kind of authorities would make your job easier?' And so that proposal was proposed."
It's been a free for all for authoritarians on both sides of the aisle since September 11. Civil libertarians will continue to watch all proposals very closely, like we've been doing. Quite simply, you can't trust anything coming out of the Justice Department or Ari Fleischer's mouth with regard to civil liberties and privacy. There's a fundamental disconnect with reality in this Administration. Like crack addicts looking for one more hit from the pipe of total control, Ashcroft and his conservative apologists don't understand that the police state they're setting up will eventually turn on them. It will consume them. They keep coming back, asking for more, taking a little more. Piece by piece. And just as slowly, their baby police state will get bigger and harder to keep quiet, until it controls them the same way it's beginning to contol everyone else. By then they'll be so addicted, we'll all be beyond help.