Ron Paul on the Federal powergrab and moneygrab.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul247.html

Good piece, with clear arguments. I agree with him on one thing at least: The definition of terrorist is too vague. We all know that the tendency of the government is to more loosely interpret laws as time goes by. This definition of terrorist could eventually be applied to just about anything.

However, once you fix this, you fix most of the Patriot Act in my opinion. To my knowledge, there are no new ideas in the Patriot Act. All of them are currently used to break up organized crime and catch drug dealers/cartels. Not that two wrongs makes a right, but that I agree with using them against mobs, cartels, and true terrorists.

He is wrong about the wiretaps. Roving wiretaps do require judicial oversight to be put in place. The difference is that when the terrorist switches phones every 2 days, you don't have to get a new warrant every 2 days, but a judge has to approve the initial warrant to set a roving tap in place.

Finally, I will agree with him about the "relevance" statute. I think the police should be required to provide probable cause, not merely relevance. The police already pull folks over for busted tail lights to be able to peer into their cars for drugs/drunk driving/etc.

In the bible belt, particularly in places like Arkansas and Louisiana, things like justice, fairness, probable cause and fourth amendment rights are virtually unknown and meaningless to their crooked cops, self serving judges and prosecutors. The scam that my wife and I got from the gestapo thugs of the Arkansas Highway Police and fraudulent Arkansas judicial system - that wasn't law enforcement - it was extortion. Arkansas roads are extremely hazardous because they continue to be a revenue scam for crooked law enforcement. They are using the law and the drug war to steal from the public. Typically, they stop a motorist on a phony traffic charge and what they do after that is usually some combination of deceit, intimidation and theft. Even today, almost ten years later, you couldn't pay us enough money to drive on the bumpy roads through a dump like Arkansas and risk getting mugged by some white trash cop.

A Great American

One time you're through the deep south and you paint it with that broad-brush of yours, Roadster.
It ain't like that throughout the entire region. What if everyone just thought of SF as nothing but a bastion of gays & liberials, eh?

Isn't that how America views it anyway? Even in southern California they call it "The Gay Area".

All I can say about driving through the south... make sure you're packin'... I've seen Easy Rider.

I've been down south many times, have family down there.

Everyone is very curtious and polite. Your in far more danger in the cities of the Eastern and Western Seaboards than you are down south.

I lived and worked in the 'deep south' for most of 40 years. I got arrested once. It was the day that Texas reduced the drinking age from 21 to 18...I was 19. A couple of bottles of Tequila later.
I was never excessively harrassed or extorted.

OOOO there was this time in Tennessee when I was 17 another kid and I were hauled in (mistaken Identity) for stealing our parents car and running away without permission. But I didn't get billy whooped or anything like that... Got a half page write up in the Herald Courier the next day with pictures and everything..."Two young men sit forlornly in a Bristol bus station." What a hoot!!!

This alone should influence people that enjoy freedom to do something!

As I have said, it does motivate me, and I'm a Patriot Act supporter. That doesn't mean I believe the act is perfect. The definition of a terrorist needs to be confined more and clearly stated.