The challenge to critics should be this: Name one civil liberty that has been violated under the Patriot Act. They can't, which is why they instead rely on hyperbole in an increasingly successful effort to make the Patriot Act a dirty phrase...

The fact is that federal authorities cannot do any of the nasty things under the Patriot Act that critics complain about — electronic surveillance, record searches, etc. — without a court order and a showing of probable cause. A federal judge has to sign off on any alleged "violation of civil liberties..."

Out on the Democratic hustings, it's as if Sept. 11 never happened. Of course, no organization contributed so much to the lax law enforcement that made possible the murder of 3,000 Americans that day than the ACLU. Mohammed Atta and Co. should have remembered it in their prayers as they screamed toward their targets. If the ACLU gets its way on the Patriot Act, some future successful terrorists will want to remember it in their prayers as well.

I agree completely. A bunch of pseudo-American Chomskyite treason monkeys in my hometown managed to get an act passed at a town meeting saying that they wouldn't comply with the Patriot Act. Of course, the five people who showed up and voted on it never bothered to ask these politically retarded neo-Nazis what was objectionable in the act itself, they just took it for granted there were bad things in it because the treason monkeys told them so. The Bush Administration needs to be much better at getting the facts out about the Patriot Act, so the Leftwing senilites don't get to define the debate this time around.