Signs of life are stirring in the White House. Here's what the vice president had to say in a speech yesterday at a Bilbray for Congress event in San Diego:

Issues of national security will clearly be at the top of the agenda in this election year. The President and I welcome the discussion, because every voter in America needs to know how the leaders of the Democratic Party view the war on terror. Their leader in the Senate, Harry Reid, has boasted publicly of his efforts to kill the Patriot Act. Their nominee for President in the last election viewed terrorism mainly as a law enforcement issue, and recently said that American troops are "terrorizing" Iraqis. The Chairman of the Democratic Party is Howard Dean, who said the capture of Saddam Hussein didn't make America safer. And those prominent Democrats who advocate a sudden withdrawal from Iraq are counseling the very kind of retreat that Osama bin Laden has been predicting and counting on. Yet these Democrats will not -- and cannot -- make the case that somehow surrender in Iraq would make our nation safer.

This is also the crowd that objects to the terrorist surveillance program -- even though that program has helped prevent attacks and has protected American lives. We've heard it said many times that our government failed to connect the dots before 9/11. We now know that some of the hijackers were in the United States, here in the San Diego area, and they placed telephone calls to al Qaeda operatives overseas before that attack. But we did not know about their plans until it was too late. To help prevent another such attack, and based on authority given him by the Constitution and by statute, the President authorized a surveillance program to intercept a certain category of terrorist-linked international communications. Let me emphasize that because on occasion you will hear the press or our opponents talk about domestic surveillance. This is not domestic surveillance. One end has to be outside the United States, and therefore international, one end has to be affiliated in some fashion with al Qaeda. It's hard to think of any category of information that could be more important to the safety of the United States. The program is a wartime measure, it's limited in scope to surveillance associated with terrorists, and it is conducted in a way that safeguards the civil liberties of the American people. Leaders of Congress have been briefed on this program more than a dozen times on the program. I have personally presided over most of those briefings. In addition, the entire program is reconsidered and reauthorized by the President every 45 days. He has reauthorized it more than 30 times since September 11th, because it has helped prevent attacks. It has protected American lives. And that program remains essential to the security of the United States. If there are individuals inside our country talking with al Qaeda, we want to know about it because we will not sit back and wait to be hit again. (Applause.)

This enemy is weakened and fractured, yet still lethal and still determined to kill Americans. We have a duty to act against them as swiftly and as effectively as we possibly can. Either we are serious about fighting this war or we are not. And with George W. Bush leading the nation, we are serious, and we will not let down our guard.