Kudos to the P-G Editorial Board

They wrote this:

The Bush administration is continuing its assault on Americans' privacy and freedom in the name of the war on terrorism.

First, in 2002, according to extensive reporting in The New York Times on Friday, it secretly authorized the National Security Agency to intercept and keep records of Americans' international phone and e-mail messages without benefit of a previously required court order. Second, it has permitted the Department of Defense to get away with not destroying after three months, as required, records of American Iraq war protesters in the Pentagon's Threat and Local Observation Notice, or TALON, database.

The editorial ends like this:

The White House needs to tell the Pentagon promptly to destroy the records of protesters as required, within three months. It also needs promptly to tell the NSA to return to following the rules, to get the approval of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court before monitoring Americans' communications. The idea that all of this is being done to us in the name of national security doesn't wash; that is the language of a police state. Those are the unacceptable actions of a police state.

Let me retype out those last few words, in bold letters and with a larger font to emphasize their importance:

Those are the unacceptable actions of a police state.

I can hear the apologists now:

Police state? How dare they compare America to a police state! Once again the liberal media is showing its insensitivity to the real victims of police states all over the world. They refuse to see that our President is only trying to protect us from the terrorist evildoers all over the world who hate us and want to kill us. Don't you remember 9/11? So a few international calls were tapped, who cares when it could stop another 9/11! Which would you rather have, some terrorist sympathizer's* phone tapped or another 9/11? That's the choice facing our President since 9/11. Tap a few international calls or risk another 9/11. What would you do to keep America safe?

*For the sake of full disclosure, I've been labelled an "anti-American" and a "terrorist sympathizer" on Fred Honsberger's TV show. Does this mean I have an NSA file?

Hang on, there's a knock at the door. I'll be right ba-