tomJan 31, 2004 at 12:56AM

Uh, he lost me in the lead:

Last week the Supreme Court let stand the Justice Department's right to secretly arrest noncitizen residents. .

With no additional mention of "noncitizen residents" the reader is left to decide if those noncitizen residents are illegal immigrants (sorry, "undocumented aliens") or legitimate immigrants vying for citizenship. If they're here illegally, shouldn't they be arrested?

The article goes downhill from there when he compares acts of terrorism to automobile accidents. Here's just one example of poor writing:

The trade-offs are larger than the FBI or the Justice Department. Just as a company would never put a single department in charge of its own budget, someone above the narrow perspective of the Justice Department needs to be balancing the country's needs and making decisions about these security trade-offs. No compay would ever put a single department in charge, but, then, he omits the FBI he'd also mentioned nary a few words prior - and fails altogether to mention the CIA. To my count, doesn't that make at least three departments? And that doesn't count Homeland Security. He shoots himself in the foot three times in one sentence.

A whole lot of personal vitriolic perspective, a modicum of a hint toward fact.