It's painful to even have to describe the Dubya team's latest assault on a formerly free society, TIPS, enlisting citizens spying on citizens. I thought I had already read of the proposal's actual demise, and had thought it unnecessary to address it, yet it's apparently still out there festering.

The Bush administration's post-Sept. 11 anti-terrorism tactics — secret detentions of suspects, denial of the right to trial and now citizen spying — have in common a lack of faith in democratic institutions and a free society. If TIPS is ever put into effect, the first people who should be turned in as a threat to our way of life are the Justice Department officials who thought up this most un-American of programs[my italics].