Continuing the fallout from last week's election, Dunc wrote Bush won by convincing Mid-Westerners that if Kerry won they would be forced into gay marriage to terrorists and their offspring butchered by the pro-choicers or the stem cell scientists.

He appealed to those who were least informed but most reactive. We liberals are not so knee-jerk. And while many of the usually apathetic democrats turned out to vote, it was the threat of a gay terror bomb being exploded in Sevenhills, Ohio that took the vote for Bush.


Couldn't have put it better myself, old chum.

Terror was at the heart of the election campaign, just as it had been the focus of Bush's presidency for the preceding three years. Another key theme was freedom. The freedom that generous old America was taking to the rest of the world.

Terror and freedom. Freedom and terror. Lovely.

So it's quite serendipitous that John Ashcroft chose today to step down as Dubya's Attorney General. After all, when it comes to freedom and terror, very few knew more about it than him.

What better way of cutting down on terrorism than limiting personal freedoms?

Just ask New York District Judge Victor Marrero who found Ashcroft's beloved Patriot Act to be a violation of the constitution.

Or Judge Audrey Collins, who found the same Act inhibited freedom of speech.

Or the Supreme Court which rained on Ashcroft's parade when it ruled that terror suspects could use the US judicial system to challenge their incarceration.

Talking of parades, how about the gay staff of the Department of Justice whose pride event was cancelled by Ashcroft last year.

And he'd also be quite keen on limiting the freedom of women to choose whether they could have an abortion.

These freedoms, presumably, are precisely the kind President Bush always wanted to offer to the great unwashed of the Middle East.

Ashcroft signed off by saying he'd secured the safety of Americans from crime and terror. To be fair, bare facts make this difficult to argue with. Not since 9/11 has an American citizen been killed by an act of terror on American soil. And I'm sure the repeal of the ban on public ownership of assault weapons makes everyone feel a whole lot safer as well.

But to borrow a phrase from John Kerry (or possibly Jack Tanner), declaring mission accomplished doesn't make it so. Bush and Ashcroft let their guard down once in the first nine months of the administration. Why do I get the feeling they're doing so again?