Good Point Ed

Also in Congress, Representative Edward Markey of Massachusetts questioned whether intelligence officials are hindering passage of a bill requiring telephone companies to do more to protect their customers' privacy. House Republican leaders canceled a vote last week on the measure, which seeks to prevent the fraudulent acquisition and sale of consumers' phone records.

``I am concerned about reports that some intelligence agency or interest had a hand in the bill's disappearance,'' Markey, senior Democrat on the House Commerce subcommittee on telecommunications, said today in a letter to House Speaker Dennis Hastert, an Illinois Republican.

Americans might not mind that the NSA is spying on them since over at the NSA they are good people who shop at Glenn Bernie and whose kids play soccer at Laurel (as the head of the NSA cogently argued) but I would expect them to be less sympathetic to the idea of the Bush administration making life easier for identity thiefs who are more or less up to the same game they are.

I'm sure there are identity thiefs who shop at Glenn Bernie too, but I don't want them shopping with my money, because the Bush administration doesn't want any privacy laws which get in their way.