Ranting to /dev/null

More on Bush

This choice bit of data is just more evidence that Bush isn't really who/what he claims to be. It compares spending trends under Reagan and Bush. As Andrew Sullivan points out, "With Clinton gone, the era of small government is over." And that's what bothers me. It wasn't a die-hard liberal that conceived the insidious Patriot Act, nor did it take communists to come up with Total/Terrorist Information Awareness, a plan that was miraculously killed by enterprising Senators who cut off its funding.

There's more. Rhetoric of bringing liberty abroad aside, this administration has had a fairly wretched track record at home. We've got CAPPS II, the program under which the Transportation Security Administration now logs the travel activities of everyone who buys a plane ticket in this country. They have screening policies that flag people who meet certain criteria, which has resulted in the detaining of hundreds of innocent civilians and the creation of a "fly list" of people who are routinely stopped by the system. Republican congressmen have moved to make the "temporary" draconian measures of the Patriot Act permanant. A fairly good laundry list can be found here.

This is getting a bit scary, folks. I'm reminded of what Benjamin Franklin said, "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."