With the recent busting up of a Qaeda cell plot in Britan -- thanks to some nice'n'legal police work and cooperation with Pakistan -- there's a fresh round of fearmongering and the expectation that Bush's poll numbers will bounce.

The latter isn't happening, and perhaps taking a cue from Holy Joe, left-leaning bloggers have begun to push back against the terror scare by pointing out that we survived the cold war without spending our lives hiding under the bed.

But good grief, when did the Republican Party become infested with what sound like so many loud, whining cowardly pundits? One second Reagan is up there standing toe-to-toe with the Rooskis, negotiating cool as a cucumber with 20,000 nukes pointed at him, and the next thing I know, the likes of Limbaugh or the crew at Powerwhine and Freeperland, are all shrieking like a class full of tweaked-out, neurotic fifth-graders having a panic attack every time OBL pops up in a grainy video with a rusty AK in the background.

Fear is over if you want it. And once Fear is over, war can be next.