It isn't important that they pass laws preventing the 9/11 attacks, it is important they pass laws helping prevent the next attacks.

I disagree, conditionally.

The exact modus operandi of the 9/11 attacks will probably never be used again; indeed, short of stuffing the plane full of terrorists-posing-as-passengers, I don't think it can succeed again.

However it is, at least, a useful measuring stick.

Telephone taps, for instance - how would adding the ability to tap telephones of suspected terrorists without a warrant have prevented this or any other attack? Well, it wouldn't - it's hard to tap a phone if you don't suspect anything. (I'm trying to avoid 9/11-specific examples - apply the example to the Federal Building bombing.)

OK, so you say "Well, okay, but what if we do have good suspects?" - in this case, if you have something to make you think they are terrorists, surely you can convince a sympathetic judge to give you a warrant.

One of the purported problems was that being a suspected terrorist wasn't one of the wiretap categories before. Well, okay, provisions that would allow you to tap suspected terrorists with a warrant would seem to me to be reasonable. Likewise, tapping all the phones of an individual rather than a wiretap on a particular telephone seems reasonable in this age of sixty-zillion telephones per person.

But a wiretap just on the sayso of an attorney general or one of the other "approved" law enforcement officers? No, no, no. It's this kind of ill-thought-out hastily executed sweeping power that is the problem with the bill.

I believe this example is one of the sunsetted provisions. That's good. But the dang bill is hundreds of pages long.