Exactly right and very, very important---of enduring importance:

  Once a list of this size is compiled, however, it takes on a life of its own. I strongly suspect that a list this large has little value as an investigative tool. What it does represent, however is far more ominous: a centralized state security apparatus that cannot stop itself from intruding into every aspect of our lives. As with the data bases compiled by the Pentagon and the NSA, this is just another sign that our fear of terrorism has allowed the Constitution to be gutted like a dead fish.

   Today, any expectation of privacy is now forfeit.  "We" as a society (yourself and all like you as exceptions) haven't begun to grasp the seriousness of this.

   When, just before the advent of the Iraq invasion/war, a craven Congress, Democrats and Republicans alike, gave their second-hand authorization to Bush in the form of a blank-cheque to wage war anywhere and in any manner he might see fit to do,  I wrote that Bush's fateful decision to launch the war would mean the end of the nation, its undoing as a society, one which should be then understood to have committed the political equivalent of "driving the nation off a cliff", this is in part what I had in mind.

    As a nation, we're "asleep in a smoke-filled room".  That's an emergency from which, in real life, rather than in a metaphorical sense, people often never wake up.

   Your piece is a brilliant reminder of the danger.  My view, now eight years old, is that the nation virtually shot itself in the head by allowing Bush to launch the war.  I don't expect the country to recover from this.  But, maybe one day, others will learn something from the wreckage that is left behind.  I see no reason to expect that people now living will be among them, though.

   If democracy is to have a standard-bearer, that task is now going to fall to another people and another time.  We had our shot and, frankly, we failed spectacularly when we once had so much in our favor.  The rot goes way, way back, though.  Some of the very people who drafted and voted into enactment the Constitution of the United States, grievously violated its most core principles when President Adams signed the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798:

   "...I knew there was need enough of both, and therefore I consented to them." [President John Adams referring to his signing of the Alien and Sedition Acts, 1798]

   We have again (what's been a long time coming) what is, in practical effect, much of the injurious harms of those mistakes in a slightly updated form.  The history we ignored at our peril is recounted in the book referenced in the following link:

   http://www.amazon.com/American-Aurora-Democratic-Republican-Suppressed-Beginnings/dp/0312194374/ref= sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1257171499&sr=1-1

  President Obama has read and praised Doris Kearns Goodwin's Team of Rivals.   Let him now read Richard Rosenfeld's American Aurora: A Democratic-Republican Returns; The Suppressed History of Our Nation's Beginnings and the Heroic Newspaper That Tried to Report It .

 

 ... "The Vice-President of the United States, Thomas Jefferson, called it a 'reign of witches'.  A short, fat man who puffed at 'seegars' and believed in monarchy was President of the United States.  At incautious moments, he predicted the nation's conversion to a kingdom with a titled nobility to oversee Congress.  Presumably, he would be king."

  http://www.amazon.com/American-Aurora-Democratic-Republican-Suppressed-Beginnings/dp/0312194374/ref= pd_rhf_p_t_1#reader_0312194374

 

When I was a kid, folks could go to a workplace without having to sign in, get a badge, and be escorted by an employee.  The exception were large factories; and even then all you needed was to be escorted by the person you were visiting.  You could also get a job by walking in and asking to speak to a particular manager and make your case--no HR screening, comparative lists, etc.

Today, in most large businesses and US government non-defense agency buildings, you must enter through a guard station, sign in with a security guard (no longer a receptionist), often be wanded for weapons, wait for your escort, be escorted to a restroom should you need it.  In addition, the architecture of workplaces has become intentionally disorienting for someone who does not work there daily.   Uniform cubes and offices in uniform arrangements with white walls except a restrooms, elevators, and break rooms.

And facilities that are doing "research" are surrounded by lots of acreage, hidden eight-foot, razor-wire topped fences, security cameras, and 24/7 patrols.

All of this was in place before 9/11.  In the last eight years it has only gotten worse.  One might as well not fly anywhere anymore, for example.

50 states, 210 media market, 435 Congressional Districts, 3080 counties, 192,480 precincts