[link|http://www.newsday.com/news/politics/wire/sns-ap-anti-terrorism-law,0,251085.story?coll=sns-ap-politics-headlines|Well I should hope so]

Excerpt:

James Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin, the House Judiciary Committee chairman, complains that the Justice Department isn't sharing enough information for lawmakers to make a judgment on how well or poorly the USA Patriot Act is working.

"I can't answer that because the Justice Department has classified as top-secret most of what it's doing under the Patriot Act," Sensenbrenner said when asked about the future of the anti-terrorism law in a recent interview.

Sensenbrenner maintains that because the department refuses to be forthcoming, it is losing the public relation battle needed to extend the law beyond its October 2005 expiration, much less expand it.

"The burden will be on the Justice Department and whomever is attorney general at that time to convince Congress and the president to extend the Patriot Act or modify it," he said. "But because of the fact that everything has been classified as top-secret, the public debate is centering on (the act's) onerousness."

I say:

So what's with Orrin Hatch? This thing was never supposed to be permanent. It was a stopgap response to an emergency. And a somewhat clumsy one, at that.

And have they fired those FBI bureaucrats that let the terrorists in?

Oh, well. I still love this administration's foreign policy. We're checkmating terrorists and weasels everywhere, and regaining respect overseas. But on the domestic front, I don't see anything like the same precision of execution.

Lots of unimpeachable patriots and conservatives are coming out against this: Bob Barr, Dick Armey (though he had misgivings about Iraq at first) Phyllis Schaffly, etc. Nobody can accuse them of being anti-American and make it stick. So it doesn't matter that the "loyal opposition" has disgraced and discredited itself over Iraq. There's a *real* loyal opposition to do the job.