Have you ever noticed that when liberals point a finger at someone, they are accused of being "political" or "unpatriotic" but when conservatives point the finger, the subject gets death threats? We saw it recently with Natalie Maines, and with Michael Newdow, the man who went to court to get the Pledge of Allegiance returned to its original state. The lateset victim, thanks to Attorney General John Ashcroft's disciples, is September 11 Commission member Jamie Gorelick.

When Gorelick was Deputy Attorney General of the U.S., she wrote a memo that created distinctions between intelligence that could be used for law enforcement purposes and intelligence that could be used for national security purposes. The memo served as a protection of the civil liberties of persons investigated by the federal government.

Did the existence of this distinction make it more difficult to conduct searches? Probably, just as the existence of similar laws makes it harder for the police to knock your door down and tear up your house (except in Louisiana). But the gathering and coordination of intelligence was made much more difficult by a number of other factors: the failure of the powerful to listen to the pleas of savvy field investigators; the shocking lack of language interpreters; the stubborn resistance to cooperation between the FBI and the CIA; an FBI director who couldn't be bothered to brief a vacationing president; irresponsible airline companies; and an alleged president who made it clear that he had little interest in receiving any type of information, much less that concerning national security.

Incidentally, Ashcroft blamed the White House ("No one told me") for his own lack of knowledge about terrorist activities, but the right-wing nutcases aren't callling in bomb threats to Bush.