“They have to come up with super-human powers for Al Qaeda because they want to use Al Qaeda to justify a super-extreme agenda for the United States of America. If you really, really want to radically transform our government and radically transform who we are as a country; if you want East German style policing, and people informing on their neighbors, and you want to get rid of the Fourth Amendment, and you want endless wars conducted for profit; if you want to completely get rid of the safety net function and the regulatory function of the government; if you have an agenda that radical, you better have a really radical justification for it. And so they have to elevate this band of death cults, fundamentalist criminals into a threat that is greater than the Soviet Union ever was when they not only had a military but they had thousands of nuclear weapons pointed at our country. They have to make Al Qaeda even worse than that.” — Rachel Maddow on Countdown With Keith Olbermann [via CROOKS & LIARS]