ORIN KERR is thankful for our civil liberties: “Public debates about the war on terrorism are filled with lots of delicious ironies. The fact that the French government has many powers that are orders of magnitude greater than anything in the Patriot Act surely ranks up as one of the better ones. . . . It’s also worth noting that in the French system, judges don’t serve as a check that can monitor potential abuses of the executive branch. Rather, French judges work closely with investigators and themselves are in charge of gathering the evidence. On this Thanksgiving Day, let’s all give thanks that we live in a country that respects civil liberties a lot more than that.” Indeed.