Brian Carnell sums things up pretty well.

Atwood can be a talented novelist (based on the one novel of hers I read in college), but as a political/economic critic, she just sounds trite. I'm old enough to remember how Nixon was going to put all the hippies and protestors into camps (they were "already set up"!), Reagan was going to start a nuclear war, welfare reform would cause millions of poor children to starve, etc., etc. Yeah, sure. *Yawn*.

When there are real, substantial constitutional abuses due to the Patriot Act, let me know. (Sorry, letting the FBI investigate what books a suspected terrorist checked out of the library isn't one, IMHO.)

But remember: 1) your constitutional rights are *very* violated when you are killed by terrorists, and 2) many of the people so worried about the "unconstitutional abuses" of the Patriot Act are the same people who think that large parts on the Constitution (e.g. the 2nd and 10th amendments) are "outdated" and best ignored. So their defense of the document rings a bit hollow....