"Tocqueville" writes today:

"I'm still waiting for the first "victim" of the Patriot Act to show up. This editorial in the WSJ says it all:" 'Mass Murder' Foiled:
A terror plot is exposed by the policies many American liberals oppose.


Thanks, "Tocqueville."

I encourage you to read the relatively long editorial in its entirety, but here is a powerful excerpt:

"Meanwhile, British antiterrorism chief Peter Clarke said at a news conference that the plot was foiled because "a large number of people" had been under surveillance, with police monitoring "spending, travel and communications."

"Let's emphasize that again: The plot was foiled because a large number of people were under surveillance concerning their spending, travel and communications. Which leads us to wonder if Scotland Yard would have succeeded if the ACLU or the New York Times had first learned the details of such surveillance programs."


Rhetorical Shift worth marking:

The Journal also notes that yesterday George Bush referred to these evil doers publicly as "Islamic fascists," which is a departure from his usual euphemistic discourse.

The language comes in the President's lead sentence: "The recent arrests that our fellow citizens are now learning about are a stark reminder that this nation is at war with Islamic fascists who will use any means to destroy those of us who love freedom, to hurt our nation."

Here is the President's brief statement in its entirety.


Racial Profiling

The Journal also asserts:

"Another issue that should be front and center again is ethnic profiling. We'd be shocked if such profiling wasn't a factor in the selection of surveillance targets that resulted in yesterday's arrests. Here in the U.S., the arrests should be a reminder of the dangers posed by a politically correct system of searching 80-year-old airplane passengers with the same vigor as screeners search young men of Muslim origin. There is no civil right to board an airplane without extra hassle, any more than drivers in high-risk demographics have a right to the same insurance rates as a soccer mom."

The above paragraph is a bit too cliche (with the "80-year-old grandma" and "soccer mom" conventions), but it is an issue that we must deal with immediately. More on why racial profiling makes sense to me in the days to come...