Begging the Messenger

John Ashcroft is asking the news media to help "inform citizens" about the actual -- not imaginary -- provisions of the PATRIOT Act. We've been trying, John, but it's pretty hard when the enforcement details are kept secret.

On a related note, the Department of Homeland Security asked a gathering of journalists in Los Angeles last Friday to help its "branding" efforts, so that the public knows where the buck stops on immigration cases. Officials then proceeded to spend more than an hour detailing the bureaucratic responsibilities and organizational flow-charts of literally scores of immigration-related federal agencies (the list of acronyms alone took up nearly two pages).