Yesterday (Sunday) here in the U.S., on the weekly news program Face The Nation with Bob McKee, one of the on-scene correspondents filed his story concerning Congress' sweeping intentions to "put an asterisk next to the Bill of Rights" (the correspondent's words). In that legislative body, there are movements underway to lift the ban on government-sponsored assassinations of political leaders, and to allow as well the Central Intelligence Agency to do business with unsavory characters (e.g., other terrorists) in order to gather intelligence. There is also support for making it easier to obtain wiretap and eavesdropping approval from the courts in order to track the doings of suspicious persons.

Bob and his co-host didn't blink an eye at this news. Their lack of comment seems to reflect tacit willingness to accept Congress' apparent intent to erode individual rights as a necessary cost of taking care of business with the immediacy that Bush's approval polls seem to warrant. Granted, this aspect of the story pales in comparison to the carnage wrought upon the nation as a result of Tuesday's horrific tragedy, but if the proposals to "put an asterisk next to the Bill of Rights" are allowed to come to pass, in one sense the terrorists will have already won.