Isn’t it coincidental there are new “terror attacks” in London at the very moment the House is debating, on the heels of a late night meeting of the House Rules Committee, an extension of the USA PATRIOT Act, billed as “the premier American anti-terrorism tool,” as the corporate media would have us believe. “This is the single most important vote that Congress will cast to keep America safe during 2005,” said Republican Rep. James Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. “We can never forget—and indeed, the news never lets us forget—the threats we face in this dangerous world,” declared the former bug exterminator from Sugarland, Texas, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. Of course, as a government propaganda tool, the corporate media will never let us forget so-called “terror attacks,” especially when those attacks just so happen to go down at the very moment unconstitutional laws are up for renewal. So dangerous are the American people, or a small number of them anyway, they need the government poking around in their library and medical records. “That’s why we need strong homeland security laws to protect us from our enemies. For four years, the PATRIOT Act has helped our law enforcement and intelligence community stay one step ahead of the terrorists, and this week, we’ve been reminded again how crucial it is we have such protection going forward,” said the former bug exterminator. It has? I guess that’s why Osama bin Laden and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi are still on the loose. But then, as former CIA assets, now conveniently dead, I guess they will remain in the loose forever, or at least for another generation or so, as that is how long the “war on terrorism” will last.