Well, we learned today that the federal government is amassing the largest database in the world:  the telephone numbers of every American who made a telephone call and the number called.

President Bush responds to this USA Today story by saying he is focused on terrorists and that the program is entirely legal and that he’s watching out for our civil liberties.  All fine and well except that the president has claimed that whatever he does in the name of chasing terrorists is legal and no big deal as to civil liberties, including warrantless searches by the National Security Agency in violation of the FISA court mandates and legislation and the torture of American citizens at Guantanamo Bay and in secret prisons scattered worldwide.

Meanwhile, the Justice Department has stopped their probe of the NSA warrantless searches, telling Congress it’s a non-starter because the spies are refusing to grant security clearances TO THE FBI and can’t give up the paperwork without the clearances.

So Osama is still walking around the mountains along the Afghan-Pakistani border and could with no trouble at all himself walk into the United States with a 5 gallon bucket of anthrax through our seaports where a few hundred tons of cocaine come in every year and there is NO plan to secure those ports nor money to do it with.  Bush’s best idea was to hire a Mideast firm to handle security for us in seaports.

I can’t figure out how such a great guy could be so low in the approval polls, can you?