One of the most amazing and amazingly unremarked upon aspects of these 9/11 commission hearings is the unanimity about the benefits of the Patriot Act. They don’t often say it outright and the Democrats especially talk about how important “increased cooperation” between the CIA and FBI is. But the reality is that all of these “needed fixes” everyone keeps talking about are the Patriot Act. All of the “institutional barriers” that prevented us from “shaking the tree,” all of the obvious things that should have been “checked out” etc are what the Patriot Act was designed to fix. It may not be perfect but I think it’s hilarious that this seems to be the one bit of policy consensus from these hearings but few are willing to admit it.