Dan Gillmore posts a weblog editorial in the Silicon Valley Press concerning the reduction in liberty that has occurred int he last four years.

"Bush's first term has been a catalog of encroachments. He has
expanded surveillance -- electronic and otherwise -- without
adequate safeguards. He has had a mania for secrecy, shielding
more and more government information from public view. This
amounts to telling Americans they have no right in many cases to
know how our money is being used or what government is doing in
our names.

This president has curbed dissent through intimidation. His
attorney general practically labeled as traitors people who
questioned the outrageously named ``Patriot Act,'' for
example. More recently, the Bush forces have excluded anyone who
is not a declared supporter from being even in the vicinity of
campaign events, and have even fenced off protesters in
Orwellian ``free speech zones'' far from the scenes."

...

But while Bush vows to expand that law's reach over our lives,
Kerry has said he would work to repeal some of the more odious
provisions, such as the one that lets government agents rifle
through our lives -- including what library books we read --
with few safeguards.

I believe that a free economy rests in large part on people's
willingness to feel free -- to take chances, to be different
from others. The surveillance state is a conformist state, where
a fog of fear deadens initiative and the willingness to take
risks.

No sane person wants to make law enforcement impotent. But risk
is part of a free culture, and the more we clamp down on things
that have any element of risk the more we clamp down on freedom
itself.