CRACKDOWN DRACONIAN

Cynthia Banham, Mark Coultan and Mark Metherell write in the Sydney Morning Herald:

The US and Britain are staging a draconian security crackdown to defend against terrorist strikes - and Australia is preparing to follow their lead.

As John Howard warned the West was locked in a 19th-century mindset inadequate to deal with 21st-century terrorists, police in Britain demanded new powers to detain suspects without charge for three months, instead of the present 14 days. At the same time, authorities in New York started random searches of people using the subway system.

Yikes! What else is in store for us?

The so-called library clause, allowing the Government to go to a secret court to seize the personal records of suspects from libraries, businesses, hospitals and other organisations, and another permitting roving wire-taps on suspects as they switch between phones, will be renewed for 10 years instead of being made permanent.

Oh no, not the dreaded library clause. Life just won't be worth living.

Update: Thanks to Tim Blair for again linking. Go here to read about the Jewish connection to the police assassination of an innocent man in London.