willingness to give our government power to do stuff. one of the things that affects how much power the government ought to have is the constitution. what we believe our government is legally allowed to do. but even within that basic framework, there's the extent to which we think there's a threat that the government needs to take extraordinary measures to respond to. and there's the extent to which we think those extraordinary measures will actually keep us safe from whatever that threat is. that's not just a question of whether we're scared enough to give the government new powers. it's whether those new powers really will help against whatever this thing is that we are scared of. and that's pretty close to an empirical question. that's why the new bomb shell reporting that ran as an op-ed today in "the new york times" is so important. he says it was not just that famous bin laden determined to strike in the u.s. presidential daily briefing that the bush administration received and ignored less than a month before 9/11, just over a month before 9/11, it was a whole series of