The poor conservatives. They spent eight years defending the surveillance state, and screaming that anyone who dared say something against it had something to hide and was probably a traitor.

Now they are the targets of that surveillance. And wouldn’t you know - their opinion has changed!

So what’s the problem?  As the National Review/Bush-following-Right has been telling us for years now, there’s nothing to worry about if you’ve done nothing wrong and have nothing to hide.  The first duty of the Government is to protect us all — keep us safe and warm from all the scary things out there, like a Good Daddy does — and if they need to trample on some lofty privacy ideals and so-called civil liberties concerns and supposed Constitutional safeguards, well: that’s just how it is.  It takes a real paranoid hysteric to think that federal government officials have nothing better to do than target domestic political opponents.  And besides, what good is the Constitution if we’re all dead at the hands of domestic McVeigh-like Terrorists?  After all, the Constitution isn’t a suicide pact.  Remember all of that?  I certainly do.

This is all as laughable as it is predictable.  Just a couple months out of power and they have suddenly re-discovered their fear of the Federal Government and their belief in the need to limit its powers. …

For now, though, one can’t help but note that these “conservatives” seem so very angry about a federal government program designed to do nothing other than protect the glorious Homeland from Terrorists.  And we know that this is the purpose of the DHS program because that’s what the Government said its purpose is.  So what else is there to know?  That’s the lesson we all learned over the last eight years:  Bush said that all of his secret surveillance programs were only directed at Al Qaeda, so how can anyone say otherwise? 

Apparently, though, the Right has forgotten these important lessons about Trusting Our Political Leaders and instead is now embracing a newfound and quite disturbing devotion to Terrorist Rights.  To borrow from Sarah Palin, they are apparently more worried about whether the Timothy McVeighs and Eric Rudolphs of the world can plan their next violent attack without interference from the DHS than they are in having the Government keep us all Safe.  What kind of twisted, warped, subversive political movement prioritizes Terrorist Rights over the Safety of Americans like this?

It’s all so tyrannical when the other guy does it.