The Patriot Act Uncovered, Welcome to a police state Options

[cypher]

First, let me preface this post by saying that personally I don't think the civil rights afforded to citizens of this great country should be extended to non-citizens. I don't believe that anybody entering this country, legally or otherwise, deserves the same rights as somebody born here until they have proven to be an adequate addition to civilized society. In my opinion, if you come to this country and behave in a manner that is any less than eternally grateful that we took you in, you deserve a lifetime deportation after a year in a maximum security prison.

Having said that, I was mortified to fully comprehend the rights and priveledges taken away from me, a 5th generation US citizen, by the passage of The Patriot Act. I highly suggest that all of you watch the film 'Unconstitutional: The War on Our Civil Liberties'. It airs at the following dates/times on DirectTV.

08.28 - 09:00AM (Sundance Channel)
08.28 - 10:20PM (Sundance Channel)
08.31 - 05:00AM (Sundance Channel)

After watching this, I don't know who to fear...

Cypher

[Druid]

http://www.infowars.com/print/patriot_act/alexs_analysis.htm
u can read thru this then look at the legislation to check the accuracy of what he says.

More lies from the people you seem to kneel down to pray to.
This is taken from the opening line form the page you linked to
"Congressman Ron Paul (R-Tex) told the Washington Times that no member of Congress was allowed to read the first Patriot Act that was passed by the House on October 27, 2001. The first Patriot Act was universally decried by civil libertarians and Constitutional scholars from across the political spectrum. William Safire, while writing for the New York Times, described the first Patriot Act's powers by saying that President Bush was seizing dictatorial control.

Here is why that is an absolute joke and proves how fools are so quick and conveniently served crap that they will happily gobble it up, if it backs what they already believe or want to believe.

Here are the two points that glared out at me when I read the 1st paragraph.
"Congressman Ron Paul (R-Tex) told the Washington Times that no member of Congress was allowed to read the first Patriot Act that was passed by the House on October 27, 2001"

I did a google search for the exact phrase "no member of Congress was allowed to read"
I wasn't at all surprised to see not a single of the 100 hits using that exact phrase linked to the Washington Times who it supposedly came from. The 100 Google hits all pointed to sites saying the exact same thing but not a single one of them linking to where this phantom quote came from, at best 20 of them linked back to one of 3 infowars pages saying much the same thing as the one you linked to.
I especially liked the infowares page that has a picture of Bush in a Hitler outfit waving a Nazi flag ( Yep thats where I would go to get unbiased information )

Heck maybe I was wrong, and there really was something from the Washington Times saying something... anything close to that. I spent another 10 minutes using the Washington Times archive search to find anything from Congressman Ron Paul making this statement. Nope not a single word. I would be very interested if you could tell me where this quote form Congressman Ron Paul came from, that is besides out of thin air.
BTW I got a huge laugh out of the fact there were 100+ sites using this exact same quote and not a single one willing or able to say where it came from.
Then again, I'm sure the people copying this statement would care less if it was true or not.

The other part I found funny was the assertion no one in Congress was allowed to read the bill they voted on. All I can say to that is
pleeeaasseee, is anyone actually dumb enough to believe that.
I really have to wonder how many people read over that line, which appears 3 times in this post so far, without giving it a second thought.
Oh yea man it happens all the time, the senate and house vote on stuff daily which they are not allowed to read. Wake the hell up guys, that isn't how it works.

The critics of the patriot act have done a great job misrepresenting possible and hypothetical abuses as holy fact.
I'll give you an example of the wide latitude of reasoning these people adopt with their criticisms
The right to bear arms could be misused or abused to allow people to kill other innocent people, therefor the second amendment should be repealed.
This is the same type of logic used by those who knowingly misrepresent what the Patriot Act is about and it's effects on U.S. citizenry

A few examples of what and how they misrepresent the facts,Contrary to what some people think or at least want you to think, the sky is not falling.
Here are a few of the points the critics try to use to inflame people.
Sneak & Peeks warrants are unconstitutional
Sorry but they have been around for 2 decades, regardless of the rhetoric used by critics about how they will be abused.
Although a lot of information about usage of the patriot act isn't released, the number of sneak and peek warrants have been.
This wide scale abuse people like the ACLU talk about amount to a total of 61.
This is 61 out of over 32,000 federal search warrants, which equals less than 2% were these terrible "sneak and peek warrants" that critics claim will be so abused that big brother will be spying on every citizen.

Oh my god they can look at my Library records
1st of all this has been completely misrepresented by critics.
3rd party records never had any special protection, nor should they.
The ACLU cry of concern has centered on
"this lets the FBI "spy on a person because they don't like the books she reads, or because . . . she wrote a letter to the editor that criticized government policy."
Total hogwash, critics seem to blink and miss this part of the act where it says several times that it doesn't apply to citizen activities protected by the first amendment to the Constitution of the United States.
Kind of an important distinction the critics keep missing for whatever reason.

The FBI doesn't need to get a court order for warrants under the patriot act
Untrue, in two different ways. Some critics even go so far as to insinuate a judge doesn't need to sign the order.
All warrants under the Patriot Act go through the FISC court which is comprised of 7 federal district courts judges, which BTW isn't picked by the administration as many people try and act like, they are picked by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Each member of the FISC court serves a seven year term with 1 member rotating out every year.
While on the subject of the FISC court I find it rather amusing none of the current critics had boo to say when the FISC powers were greatly expanded by Clinton under the Intelligence Appropriation Act of 1995. Hmmm... I wonder why that is???
Or even better along the same lines how about the same critics never said boo when Clinton gave the Attorney General authorization to approve physical searches under EXECUTIVE ORDER 12949. This ability of the Attorney General which people are screaming about now has actually existed for 10 years.
Just so there will be no misunderstanding, I'm not bringing up this last bit as a Clinton bash, I actually agree with it because I know it was the answer to limitations found during the investigation of how Aldrich Ames got away with spying for so long.

[holden_caulfield]

William Safire is a hack. I don't care how many words he knows.