Losing the war on terror?

Here's an awesome DailyKos blogpost which asks, "How can we declare success when we have allowed terror to so greatly redefine American society?"

The terrorists' most dangerous weapon isn't anthrax or planes or dirty bombs; it's fear. Fear is their most destructive weapon because it operates in a stealth manner. Fear is what has caused our government to turn on its citizens and brag that it does so out of courage in the fight against evil. And in that sense, by goading the greatest democracy on earth to view 300 million citizens as the potential enemy, fear has proved to be the most effective weapon of mass destruction of all.

I could hardly agree more.

UPDATES

Interesting denials from both Verizon and BellSouth with regard to whether they provided domestic phone call records to the NSA. So if this isn't going on, why didn't the President deny it when speaking about the program last Friday? Of course, if you were involved in a classified surveillance program and were being sued for breaking the law by not protecting your customers' privacy, what would you say?

Georgia's constitution, like that of many states, has a clause requiring that ballot issues address only a single issue. A judge today overturned the 2004 state constitutional amendment that banned same sex marriages because it also barred any laws which granted other rights to same sex couples.

Next up in DARPA's plan for a robotic military force: the "Urban Challenge," a competition to be held in 2007 "in which autonomous cars or trucks will have to maintain an average speed of 10 miles an hour while negotiating a mock city, crossing busy intersections and even merging into moving traffic." Not terribly proud that my alma mater is planning to participate...