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"Is life so dear and peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death." -Patrick Henry, 1775

"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." -Ben Franklin

The question isn't whether or not it's acceptable to sacrifice genuine liberty for safety. The question is whether this particular set of laws, here being condemned without an alternate plan, has done so.

Remember the Dems did vote YEA here. If they had a better plan, that was the time to offer it and campaign for it. They didn't have one. It's their PC sensibilities that watered this one down into a harassing nuisance at airports. We can't selectively pick on the people whom we know to be the risk--we have to pick on everybody. But are 80-year-old grandmothers actually having to go to jail, or having their phones bugged by the FBI? I doubt it. They're just be harassed by bumptious individuals at airports. A slight delay, an insulting inconvenience--but no net loss of freedom.

There probably is more inconvenience by busybody bureaucrats and low-wage security workers than there has ever been before, to a select few, but is there a genuine and pervasive loss of fundamental freedom and privacy by all Americans?