CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: We have these cycles where we have a period of quiet, a period of safety and all of the sudden we get all upset about the methods that we have used in the past, as in the interrogation report, or about NSA intrusion into our lives, you know, this is the government spying on us.



We have to understand that in the grown-up world there's a trade-off between security and liberty. You can you pretend, as Obama does, that there's no trade-off. There always is, it has been since the beginning of time. We are now seeing the results of these kind of attacks. It starts with a movie studio, which in the scheme of things is trivial, but it can hit our power stations, hit our nuclear facilities. It could hit our banking system where all the records are wiped out. This could be a catastrophe for the country on a Pearl Harbor scale.



And I think we have simply have to grow up as a nation and say if it takes the NSA intruding, of course with the consent of the companies involved, we're going to have to accept that, otherwise we're going to live under the sword of Damocles.



BRET BAIER, SPECIAL REPORT: Judge, I know you could expound for a long time, but the short answer. The short answer.



KRAUTHAMMER (jokingly): I just wanted to set him off. No time left.



JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: The relationship between liberty and security has to be a bias, not a balance, a bias in favor of freedom. You can sacrifice your liberty, but you can't sacrifice mine.



KRAUTHAMMER: And what happens if the banking system is wiped out and the country is absolutely immobilized.



NAPOLITANO: I don't know why we would have to sacrifice liberty in order to keep the banks safe.



KRAUTHAMMER: Because they're going to have to open up their internal networks and their secrets and have the government intrude and you and I are going to have to trust the government not to overstep.



MARA LIASSON, NPR: Why is the government the only one?



KRAUTHAMMER: They have the resources, they have the facilities, they have the experience and they are the ones who can do it.



NAPOLITANO: Nobody trusts the government to restrain itself because it can't.



KRAUTHAMMER: It's protected you since the American revolution.