The Patriot "act"

No Matter How Cynical I Become, I Can't Keep Up Watch

Here's a charmer: "New Patriot Act Terror Laws Used Against Common Criminals". Remember all of those unconstitutional laws which were passed just weeks after 9/11 which were frightening but were supposed to protect us from "terra'ists"? Remember how civil libertarians warned about the slippery slope? Check out these quotes:

"Within six months of passing the Patriot Act, the Justice Department was conducting seminars on how to stretch the new wiretapping provisions to extend them beyond terror cases," said Dan Dodson, a spokesman for the National Association of Criminal Defense Attorneys. "They say they want the Patriot Act to fight terrorism, then, within six months, they are teaching their people how to use it on ordinary citizens."
...
The law, passed two months after the Sept. 11 attacks, erased many restrictions that had barred the government from spying on its citizens, granting agents new powers to use wiretaps, conduct electronic and computer eavesdropping and access private financial data.
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Before the anti-terrorism act, U.S. officials would have had to use international treaties and appeal for help from foreign governments to retrieve the cash, deposited in banks in Jordan and Israel. Now, they simply seized it from assets held by those banks in the United States.

I don't want to defend con artists and drug dealers, obviously, but we used to have laws about how people could and could not be prosecuted. Remember that?

Sparky Watch

Tom Tomorrow shows us the truth behind conservative "realists".