If I don't die by Thursday, I'll be roaring Friday night.

I haven't had my morning cup of coffee yet, but I'm already pondering the fantasy world of political theater in which cable TV's pundits seem to live. At issue is whether Bush administration policies since 9/11 have made the nation truly safer. I think this is a perfectly legitimate topic in the evolving presidential election debate.

The obvious place to start is to ask yourself, "Do I feel safer?" Hmmm, can’t say that I do. Does the huge bureaucracy created by the Department of Homeland Security make me feel safer? Nope.

President Bush certainly intends to use this topic as one of the cornerstones of his reelection campaign — he intoned the phrase "more secure" six times at his news conference on Monday in describing the nation under his stewardship. Why do I not feel more secure?

Does detaining people without due process make us more secure? Under Attorney General John Ashcroft, the Justice Department has undermined constitutional protections including the right to due process, the right to public trial by jury, and bans against unreasonable searches and excessive punishment. Almost two years ago, Ashcroft stated before the Senate Judiciary Committee that those decrying the loss of civil liberties ”aid terrorists, for they erode national unity and diminish our resolve.” Such accusations may chill criticism, but do not change the fact that Justice Department policies undermine the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Eighth amendments.

In the years since the terrorist attacks, the Bush administration has moved more quickly than any administration since World War II to make government activities, documents and other information secret. Is this making us more secure? Hundreds of thousands of public documents have been removed from government Web sites. Other public information has been edited, and access to some materials has been made more difficult. Some government materials yanked from the Internet, such as EPA reports on the consequences of industrial accidents at chemical plants, may be viewed only in government reading rooms (if you can get an appointment.)

"If the public paid for it, the public has a right to see it," says Mark Tapscott, director of the Heritage Foundation's Center for Media and Public Policy, a conservative think tank. "Otherwise, you will have manipulation to conceal the truth." Is that what the Bush administration is up to, concealing the truth? "We seem to be shifting to the public's need to know instead of the public's right to know," says Gary Bass, executive director of OMB Watch. I think I have both the need and the right to know if our government is making me "more secure."

Sooner or later, Bush is going to have to actually step onstage with someone who will aggressively question his policies, face-to-face, for the first time since 9/11. How has he made the US more secure, how has diminishing civil rights and freedom of information made us more secure, how has war against nation states made us more secure when the enemy (Al Qaeda and international terrorism) doesn’t have a nation?

Do you feel safer and more secure now than on 9/11?