NOTHING TO HIDE?

For the first time in over a year our appointed President flew back from the Texas ranch to sign a bill on a Saturday, coincidentally the same day Saddam was captured. You have to admire the ingenuity of the Dubya disinformation team. Since public opinion weighed heavily against the Patriot II Act, they decided to slip in its provisions piecemeal, on riders to other legislation.

One wonders why they didn't want this news to hit the front page.

...while most Americans watched as Hussein was probed for head lice, few were aware that the FBI had just obtained the power to probe their financial records, even if the feds don't suspect their involvement in crime or terrorism.

The Bush Administration and its Congressional allies tucked away these new executive powers in the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2004, a legislative behemoth that funds all the intelligence activities of the federal government. The Act included a simple, yet insidious, redefinition of "financial institution," which previously referred to banks, but now includes stockbrokers, car dealerships, casinos, credit card companies, insurance agencies, jewelers, airlines, the U.S. Post Office, and any other business "whose cash transactions have a high degree of usefulness in criminal, tax, or regulatory matters."

Could it be because the public might be upset that deceitful Dubya just eliminated the judicial oversight necessary to protect the Fourth Amendment? Forget about the flap over your library records in Patriot I, this new piece invasive legislation allows the FBI to explore every aspect of your material records and not only do they not have to justify the investigation, they don't even have to tell - anyone - that they're doing it and the keepers of your records are not allowed to tell you they were released.

Somehow this doesn't sound like the democracy they taught me about in elementary school.