OK, this is post #618 on the second anniversary of MsGeek.Org moving to Blogspot. Happy Anniversary to me.

Anyway, that's neither here nor there. The blockage of renewal of USA-PATRIOT is a victory, but that's just one battle, one skirmish. The war for the continued survival of the Republic can still be lost.

Let me quote Senator Frank Church, speaking in 1975 when the National Security Agency was in its infancy:

If this government ever became a tyranny, if a dictator ever took charge in this country, the technological capacity that the intelligence community has given the government could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back, because the most careful effort to combine together in resistance to the government, no matter how privately it was done, is within the reach of the government to know.

"I don't want to see this country ever go across the bridge. I know the capacity that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that this agency [NSA] and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return.

Dubya's overwhelming arrogance and tinhorn dictator style needs to be answered with Impeachment and Removal. "Sure, I spied on American Citizens. And I'd do it again."

Everything Sen. Church predicted has come to pass. We are in the antechamber of total tyranny in America. We need to turn back, NOW, and punish the Violator in Chief. He broke the law of the land when he broke FISA by sending NSA to spy on American citizens.

This is it, folks. A government of laws or a government of men? This is the question.