(Originally posted to Politics at EraBlog on Fri, 14 Feb 2003 19:15:16 GMT)

I’ve been meaning to rant about this for a while now, but haven’t found the time yet.

Last Friday, the Center for Public Integrity announced that it had obtained a secret draft of Patriot Act II. Previously, it had been kept in almost complete secrecy, only being shown to Dennis Hastert and Dick Cheney.

The Domestic Security En­hance­ment Act of 2003 (full text) is outrageous. Secret arrests, eaves­drop­ping without court orders, delaying no­ti­fi­ca­tion to targets of in­ves­ti­ga­tions for up to three months, secret subpoenas, crippling the Freedom of In­for­ma­tion Act, deporting American citizens, huge new powers for the FBI, and more.

Obviously, we need to fight terrorism more ef­fec­tive­ly, but shredding the Bill of Rights is un­ac­cept­able.

Bill Moyers interviews Chuck Lewis of the Center for Public Integrity. TomPaine.com has a useful summary. War­Blog­ging.com has addressed Patriot Act II repeatedly. It’s all positively Orwellian.

Write to your rep­re­sen­ta­tives.