Law-abiding citizen and military ethicist Oliver North claimed yesterday that the Times Square "bombing" could have been prevented if only those evil Democrats hadn't stalled the renewal of the Protect America Act. The PAA is only the latest in a series of increasingly draconian steps the Bush administration has taken to expand its surveillance powers while simultaneously eliminating any possibility of meaningful oversight.

Either Ollie the Honorable doesn't understand what the PAA is meant for, or he's just lying, which I highly doubt. The PAA's primary function is to grant the Attorney General the ability to conduct warrantless surveillance of foreign-to-foreign calls, so unless this bomber kid called Mexico from Canada, then rode his or her bike to Times Square, the PAA doesn't really apply here. Unless, Ollie the Cosmopolitan thinks that this scenario happened:

Robert the Canadian: [on the phone] Hey, so I'm gonna go throw a bomb at the recruiting station in Times Square.

Roberto the Mexican: [on el telefono] Cool, man. Gimme a call when you get back to Canada.

or he just wants more domestic and international spying all around. I don't want that, because more spying would make my ongoing international conspiracy to find Ollie North and bludgeon him with a tire iron more difficult. It would also render obsolete all dystopian sci-fi novels, because who wants to read about it when you can live the real thing?

One thing the PAA is certainly not designed to stop is a few bike punks/activists getting together saying, "Hey, uh, this war is still really fucked up, and we're coming up on 5 years now. Fuck that." We could just arrest everyone riding a bike or wearing a hoodie, but those kids buy a lot of home recording equipment and PBR, and the economy needs all the help it can get. Maybe Ollie the Just just wants us to arrest Nancy Pelosi and anyone else who has held up extending PAA. Sadly for him, that group includes most congressional Republicans and George W. Bush.