Domestic Spying: Dems and news commentators need to point out the obvious.

The obvious:

By bypassing warrants, * is essentially taking domestic spying "off the books". Since there will be no accessible record of who or what was spied on, we cannot know that there was not abuse of this government power to spy on political opponents (Democrats, anti-war organizations) etc.
This is the crux of the matter. Also, Dems and commentators should use the word "king" and "emperor" repeatedly. Essentially that * is using the "war on terror" to provide a rationale for assuming the powers of a king or emperor, decidedly outside of the Constitution and the American tradition or idea of democracy. This is starting to be done, but needs to be hammered relentlessly.

Furthermore the debate over this should be used to revisit the neglected discussion over the fact that using the "war on terror" as a "wartime" reason to remove democratic checks and balances from our country is not legitimate, as the whole concept is nebulous, has no possible defined endpoint or victory condition, and is therefore an open-ended excuse to dismantle democracy and assume imperial powers to the executive branch indefinitely. The whole concept of the "war on terror", considered from this perspective, (as opposed to the idea of fighting terrorism which few are opposed to) is rarely if ever questioned by politicians or newspeople.

The politicians apparently don't have enough courage to do this, they are afraid of being tarred as "against the war on terrorism". This doesn't excuse them, it is long past time that they called this into question since it's the central reason used to dismantle democracy. But the press actually doing its job could help immeasurably.

It is as simple as reporters starting to repeatedly and doggedly ask the questions, "who is the enemy in the war on terrorism?" "What defines victory in the war on terrorism?" "If there is no defineable victory condition, is it reasonable to base fundamental changes in American government on this concept?"

Kind of like the media, is it not?

No story = no event taking place, or no signficance to the event taking place.

Thus, we see the importance of propaganda, or ILLUSION of what is happening versus what is really happening.