> The Patriot Act was a clearing house for all of those police powers that law enforcement has been wanting all along.

I worked in a Library at one time, years ago. The main librarian there told me that we weren't, under any conditions, to hand out information on anyone's reading habits to police/feds; we were to pass the cop/fed off to her, and she would deal with it. She told me that, back during the 'red scare' that the FBI monitoried a lot of what people read/checked out, mostly to harrass people that they felt would be easy targets for communist witch-hunts. Laws were passed to end this; and the FBI has complained until they got them back via 9/11. But before thier ability to know what you were reading didn't 'stop those commies' (who if you'll remember/read about were talked about in those days as being as 'dangrous' as a 'terrorist' seems to be today; what the hell, are these terrorists uber-ninjas or something? just because they are suicidal doesn't make them invincable) it instead was just used to bully and harrass normal shmoes like you and me.

What's old is new again.

And lovegravy, you're still an inflamitory asshole. Your little 'mission' to show us all 'what the other side thinks' is so trite, that it would be sad if it wasn't so funny watching you crap all over yourself. You know very little about us, yet that doesn't for a moment seem to make you stop and think about how to really reach us. Your agenda isn't to 'show us the other side of things' or to even help us, it's to get yourself attention, plain and simple. If you really cared to 'show us the other side' you would at least *try* to understand who the hell you were talking to first.