From Michael Ramirez.

Ramirez is a disgusting right-wing cartoonist, and there can be no doubt that this cartoon is intended to mock those of us who prefer Patrick Henry ("Give me liberty or give me death!") to Senator Patrick Roberts ("You have no civil liberties if you are dead.") But Ramirez has made a point here that I'm sure he didn't intend: The government was already illegally spying on us before 9/11, while ignoring numerous warnings obtained legally. I read a quote last week, I think from some disgruntled ex-CIA guy, saying that when you're looking for a needle, the last thing you want to do is make the haystack larger. Wiretapping didn't stop 9/11.

And as the right wing is always so fond of reminding us, lots of people died to give us what freedoms we have to day--going back to England, through the Revolution, and in the Civil War. Heck, they'll even pretend that the American soldiers dying in the latest Iraq fiasco are somehow protecting our freedom. But now the wingnuts are willing to let the sacrifices of those two million or so Americans who died in those wars, and the millions more who fought and didn't die, all be for nought because 3000 Americans died on 9/11. "Freedom isn't free," their bumper stickers say. So why are they in such a hurry to give it away?