The show cancelled by PBS to which Shooter refers was cancelled for two reasons. (1) The filmmaker -- a first-timer, who scored a serious coup in landing a gig to make a film for a major PBS series -- violated the contract he was given by turning in a two-hour film when the terms clearly stated he was to deliver a one-hour piece. Then he refused to edit. The film was to be part of an entire series that had been scheduled and promoted months in advance. This guy thought all the affiliates all across the country should just change schedules to accomodate his vision. (2) PBS/CPB was uncomfortable with the very sketchy fact-checking. People who appeared in the film seemed not to be using their real names, or be claiming to representing organizations they didn't represent or that didn't exist. PBS/CPB asked the filmmaker for better documentation/fact-checking. Again he refused. And went to the right-wing media and screamed like a big baby.

How about monitoring every call to / from SUSPECT terrorists then? Is that O.K. with you? Maybe you just don't KNOW you are calling suspected terrorists?

P.S. Kitt – good point – Truman dropped TWO A-bombs to end WWII. Most every historian agrees that was the right decision for him to make. BTW: you don’t think the ROBERTS Supreme Court would uphold empounding every Arab-American or otherwise suspected terrorist in the meantime? They will certainly uphold lesser included “offenses” as well.

Indeed. PBS just cancelled a show describing the difference between moderate and fundamentalist Muslims. Dhimmitude reigns.

God, you're embarassing. Dhimmitude? A creep like you would be the first to throw stones at sinners if your paranoiac fantasies of being subjected by manly bearded Muslims ever came true.

Followers follow. If you weren't a follower, you'd see no threat in "dhimmitude".

(Incidently, although I'd be very interested in seeing this documentary, the involvement of Frank Gaffney does not bode well: he is a PNAC signatory, which is to say, he is a crazy man who wants to rule the entire world, with no exaggeration.)

Without a doubt PBS considers Bush a greater threat than suicide bombers. At least until another attack occurs.

Bush has ordered actions which have resulted in far more deaths than all the suicide bombers in history.

Please explain how suicide bombers are a greater threat to human life than the Bush administration before you continue.

How about monitoring every call to / from SUSPECT terrorists then? Is that O.K. with you? Maybe you just don't KNOW you are calling suspected terrorists?

Please explain how you are made more secure by government monitoring of conversations unrelated to terrorism. I do not discuss anything remotely construable as terrorism with anyone I speak to. I am a Christian and practically a pacifist.

How does recording an interaction between me, a non-terrorist, and someone suspected of terrorism, in which NO terrorist activity will be discussed, make you or anyone else safer?

It only violates my privacy while adding absolutely no security benefit.

- Jake007

I wonder if you have any children. People who cheer on genocide are the laziest, most incapable of thinking beyond how to take a dump without crusting up their panties or boxers or briefs.

Go back to Freperland, where they will greet your basement-boy slaughter dreams with out-stretched arms.

Why isn't Congress investigating/overseeing the NSA scandal? Because the democrats are equally at fault with republicans in allowing this very scary invasion of our privacy. For that reason alone, this issue is a non-starter for this or any future Congress.

Congress now seems to me to be at fault not for failing to investigate but for being complicit in denying citizens information both on the program itself and on the congressional oversight of it.Lisa S.

For the very simple reason that if one chooses to weight openess over security, one has to admit to choosing "acceptable" numbers of deaths over doing everything possible to limit those deaths. In other words, Democrats have no plan "B", just criticisms of Plan "A".shooter242

Just a comment on the point of vigilance in defending freedom: Lisa S. is correct that Congress is complicit in the information dearth, but not quite damning enough. Congress is complicit for not stopping the programs. Congressional oversight, media outrage, and public response forced the Bush administration to terminate the Total Information Awareness (TIA) program run by Iran-Contra criminal John Poindexter.

But that didn't do what people thought oversight and public attention thought it would do: stop the abuse. What happened next was that the Bush Administration opened up the TALON program in the Defense Department, a seemingly less intrusive program, which then got intrusive, got reported on in January, and the DOD announced that it too would shut down. Just keep one step ahead and we keep them out of surveillance, right?

Not exactly. When brought to public attention in January TALON was already plenty abusive. But it is, in some respects, a diversion. Because what really happened is that the Bush Administration went looking for someplace to put TIA, and found a willing client in the intelligence services of Singapore. They grew and expanded the TIA in Singapore, under direction of some of America's biggest defense contractors (Boeing, Lockheed, etc.) and others, and American "advisors". Suddenly, last week, news breaks that the NSA has been engaged in really big domestic data mining, and has constructed the largest database in the history of the planet, mostly consisting of data on American citizens (looking for the link, I saw it in the paper in the past week). I guess we can console ourselves that a high-tech business that had offshored to the Far East is now a domestic industry again? Anybody remember this phrase and who was creating it?

Off the shelf, self financing, independent covert operations capability' outside the checks and balances of executive and congressional oversight, for the purpose of...

On to shooter's comment. Ever heard of Lagrange multipliers and optimization shooter? When you have two variables, in this case openness and security, or as us liberals would put it, civil liberties vs. security, it sets up a curve, usually a first-quadrant hyperbola along which moving in one direction increases civil liberties at the expense of security, in the other, increases security at the expense of civil liberties. What most people fail to realize is that the curve is one of a family of such curves, and there is one highest up in the quadrant that marks the curve in which everything has been moved to its maximum efficiency. Along that particular curve (the optimal curve) it is inevitable that any gain in security must be paid for by a decrease in civil liberties and vice versa. Along any other curve in the family, one always has the choice of looking for a way to move closer to the optimal, and so the choice is a phony one. If you and your precious Bush Administration cannot prove that you are on the optimal curve, then any scary scenarios that pretend that we need to give up civil liberties, or openness as you call it, are demagogery and unnecessary treasons against a free society.