"Protect us"

Following from last week's revelations that virtually all telephone calls are being logged, for "national security data mining" purposes, Billmon blogs on the ever more apparent, evolving police state that we are living under in his tour de force, or should I say a justifiable tour de paranoia, titled Leviathan:

Leviathan, in other words, is almost free of any restraint, save the arbitrary limits - such as they may be - set by the Cheney administration or, perhaps more importantly, by custom and habit. The creature doesn't know all the things it can do, but only because it hasn't tried to do them yet. But it's starting to figure this out, and it's going to take more than an election and a few corruption probes to make it back down. Having entrusted their security and their liberties to the beast, Leviathan's subjects will be lucky not to wind up like Jonah, lodged in its belly.

He ends by citing polling data that shows that a very large chunk of the populace would rather be "protected":

Carroll Doherty, associate director of the Pew Research Center, said in repeated polls taken since Sept. 11, 2001, "a solid plurality, around 50 percent" continues to say they would rather the government went too far in restricting civil liberties than not going far enough in protecting the country.

"There's a concern about terrorism that continues to this day. And, on balance, people are saying, `protect us,'" said Doherty.