YOU ALREADY HAVE ZERO PRIVACY.

If you look up "Ed Morrissey" (of Hot Air) and "surveillance" on Google, here are the first two hits you get. First, from Morrissey today on the NSA/PRISM news:

Contra the training materials, this is very much something to worry about — especially for the Obama administration... 

...This means that the NSA and FBI have access to communications of the legislative and judicial branches — at least those that go through public servers, no? Maybe Congress would like to invite Eric Holder up for another session really soon. They’d better send it by carrier pigeon...

And Morrissey from January 2009:

Hmmm. This should really enrage the Left. The FISA court will make public a ruling that validates George Bush’s warrantless surveillance on international communications, including those with one terminus in the United States... 

In the end, though, the biggest beneficiary should be George Bush. He has been unfairly castigated as some sort of fascist for using the power he already had available to track terrorist communications and keep this nation safe. Plenty of people owe him a big apology — and the New York Times and Eric Lichtblau are first in line.

FISA's word was good enough for Morrissey once upon a time. What turned him around, I wonder?

In another recent item Morrissey puts on the doe-eyes and the peace button and says, "Perhaps this will move this issue out of the partisan sphere and into a common ground in which we can all work to define exactly how far we’re willing to go in trading privacy for security." Pfffft. Morrissey, Michelle Malkin, Glenn Reynolds, Jonah Goldberg, and all those guys who were wondering what our problem was when we complained about this shit years ago will do everything they can for civil liberties now short of calling for the end of any of the legislation that makes this panopticon possible. Laura Ingraham says maybe she was hasty about the Patriot Act -- live and learn, right? -- but I expect she'll get with the Jim Sensenbrenner position, which is that the Act cannot fail, it can only be failed by unscrupulous liberals pretending to be interested in national security.

All honor and credit to Glenn Greenwald for unearthing this outrage, but frankly I assumed they were doing this already. Scott McNealy -- well, I was going to say warned, but actually he was just notifying us years ago, and since then the journalists have just been catching up. I'd like to roll it all back, and in the past I've been guardedly optimistic about left and right coming together on these issues. But since the brethren started really pushing fake scandals, I can't see anything going on in their heads except some animal drive to stir shit sufficiently that when they put another of their mooks up there to say "so much promise, to no great purpose" -- and then tell us how Kathleen Sebelius tried to kill a widdle girl -- people might buy it, and then they can start looting the treasury and taking axes to the safety net. Again.

I despair of fixing some things, but I'd like to keep them from making more of a shithole of the place than it already is.

UPDATE. Here's another good one. The Anchoress, today:

“He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.” ― George Orwell, 1984 

Just some stuff to think about as we digest all of this breaking news about what the government knows and when it knows it, how it gets it and where it stores it. And how ubiquitous is the case (tracking credit cards, too?).

Also, dark references to The Lives of Others and Teddy Kennedy. Compare and contrast: The Anchoress, August 2006, defending what the Wall Street Journal called "policies many American liberals oppose," including "monitoring some communications outside the context of a law known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act," torture and ethnic profiling:

Oh, wait…we’re not seeing attacks every 18 months, anymore - are we? In fact…it looks like President Bush’s terrible policies helped foil this latest attempt, despite the best efforts by the NY Times and others to cripple necessary programs... 

I keep remembering Harry Reid crowing, “we killed the Patriot Act.” 

There is a time to be a child, to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child. Then there is a time to put childish things away. If you want to disagree with policies meant to keep you safe, do it. If you want to hate a man or even a movement, do it…but do it with something that goes beyond adolescent spouting off, backed up by nothing more than “feelings,” “caring,” and hysterical, dramatic angst. Sometimes I read the drivel some of you folks write me, and I want to take you by the shoulders and shake you and say, “grow up. Grow UP!“

Looks like Thee Anch has grown right up to the Obama-is-the-Stasi stage of development. I can probably fill this week's whole column with this shit.

UPDATE 2. Here's a cowboy who thinks "GOP should lead fight against the Patriot Act," and invites us to "Imagine this scenario: three Republicans senators -- obviously, the mostly likely candidates being Ted Cruz, Mike Lee and Rand Paul -- craft a bill that would repeal, or far more likely roll back certain provisions of the Patriot Act..." Sorry, if I'm going to stretch my fantasy muscles that far, I'd rather focus on Dita Von Teese.

UPDATE 3. In comments, mortimer is already doing some research for me. Thanks, citizen journamalist!