Bin Laden must be quite proud of himself

As I floated into work this morning (it's raining, and I do mean RAINING, here)I heard on NPR that our CIA director, Leon Panetta, is kept awake nights by his fears that Al Qaida is going to launch another terrorist attack on the United States homeland! Seriously, a quote of him saying exactly that before a Senate committee was included in the news broadcast and replayed every half hour.

And over at the Washington Post, Richard Cohen is soiling himself for all the world to witness as well. Isn't that special?

I especially liked this part of Scott's post (emphasis mine):

Yeah, here’s the thing, Richard. Just like you can’t teach to the slowest learner in your class without seriously short-changing the other students, the government can’t keep pruning the Bill of Rights in order to reassure the most tremulous bedwetters amongst us, because while there’s no ceiling to their panic attacks and night terrors, there’s definitely a floor beneath which the Constitution no longer functions.

I don’t want Khalid Sheik Mohammed or Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to face trial because I’m a fan of Law and Order, but because there’s no such thing as “security” if the government doesn’t feel constrained by the law. If the Justice Department and the FBI don’t feel obliged to follow the rules in high profile cases, what makes you think they’ll be any more scrupulous when they come to your house after the librarian tips them off to your subversive reading habits? Well, not you, of course; you’re immune to police misconduct because you’re white and you know Sally Quinn. But if we all squeal Havoc! and let loose the dogs of law enforcement, then sooner or later, a lot of innocent who don’t have the benefit of a Washington Post column will get scooped up and abused by a system that values enforcement over the law.