PATRIOT II is clearly gratuitous, a prosecutorial " wish-list" bill which having been rebuffed once already is being pushed with the determination that entrenched bureaucracies can muster ( Ashcroft did not invent these things, most date back to the late 60's early 70's as bureaucratic goals when J.Edgar Hoover saw that black bag jobs had become political as well as legal liabilities. The NSA tried to force Hoover to continue the practice but Hoover refused unless ordered in writing by the President of the United States)Coupled with a sunset clause, PATRIOT I is reasonable as a wartime measure when narrowly focused on terrorism and national security investigations. The Pre 9/11 rules on FBI-CIA-Justice communications were self-defeatingly insane - however if prosecutors continue to apply PATRIOT to garden variety criminal matters, they will discredit it and Congress will revoke it or not renew the legislation.

seriously, what planet is kristof from? because i think he must have got his ideas about the american political climate from tv and movies.what he and others who share his opinions about how civil we lefties used to be in the "good ol' days" fail to realize is, in reality all that has changed is that we are only now beginning to be heard after 23 years in the wilderness. hoo boy, you should have heard the things we used to say about reagan and his fascist goose-stepping corporate cronies and torture-happy goons down south of the border. we left-liberals bared our teeth frequently. we just didn't have anybody's ear. and only now when we are just beginning to, it's funny [well, not all THAT funny] to hear "neoliberals" like kristof whining that we should jolly well turn around and go back into that wilderness and "SHUT UP!"the only allegedly left-leaning people who didn't speak over "indoor-voice" level when all hell was breaking loose were the status quo "neoliberals" in the print media and the corridors of power who had their fucking lunches bought for them. the traitors to our party we know and love today didn't just spring up overnight; they've been well ensconced in the machine since carter. i'm betting that a whole stack of "democrats" from that era creamed their jeans over reagan. they had grown complacent due to porkbarrel politics and beltway ego-stroking. it's the same climate that produced laff-quote "democrats" like gray davis that, when the lights went out, sure smelled a lot like republicans.but if you were one of the left-liberals who thought that apartheid was evil and unworthy of "constructive engagement", who thought that seeing one tree was NOT like seeing them all, and that passing along massive federal deficits to our great-grandchildren was a crime, we've been calling things by their true names for a lot longer than the current kristofian/ADHD news cycle would indicate.someone ought to tell kristof to do a google keyword search on the word "muckraking". it goes back a long way.