Common Sense - Resistance to the Patriot Act is growing

Geuda Springs is a little town in southern Kansas, not too far from the Oklahoma border. About 200 decent, proud and sometimes kind of ornery people live there, and, precisely because they’re so independent-minded there’s a whiff of outlaw about the reputation of the place. Earlier this month, just to raise some eyebrows, the Geuda Springs town council passed an ordinance requiring every head of family to own a gun, and ammunition, and be ready to use it.

I WAS TRAVELING through the area, hoping to get a firsthand sense of what people in the American heartland were thinking about the war on terror, generally, and the war in Iraq, particularly, and I figured I’d go straight to God’s own gun-toting country, Geuda Springs, to check it out. What I found there was not what I expected. If the administration believes folks like these are buying the official line from Washington, it had better take another look. They’re thinking long and hard about the way this war is being waged and what it means to their own ferocious sense of freedom.
First stop, the one-room post office. Taped to the counter was a clip from the Ponca City, Okla., newspaper (just across the state line) showing a local boy manning a checkpoint in Baghdad. He was wounded a couple of weeks ago, but returned to duty. “I don’t talk to the media,” said the postmistress, who was tired already of the local TV crews attracted to Geuda Springs by the gun ordinance. But she pointed me toward a couple of people who would talk, she said.

http://msnbc.com/news/996267.asp?0cv=CB20

Better get Jeb's Thugs with guns, rubber bullets and tear gas ready for the whole nation!

If we start there , people will begin to understand.

Go on over to your local pub tonight...

They know more than you think..

and they will tell you flat out they don't like whats been happening lately.

It's their kids that are dying and coming home maimed from the war.

Havocdad has a favorite cheese. It comes from France. He makes great effort to track it down and get some in the house for the holidays. Three years ago, he found a shop in Vancouver Canada that had it and he purchased it, had it sent to our rather remote town here in the nothern USA.

Next year, they couldn't do it. They had the stuff, just couldn't send it here. He has spent lots of time online and on the phone trying to track it down from a retailer in the USA. He found it, ordered and paid for it, and a different cheese was sent.

Several emails and calls later, the reason was explained: the Partiot Act! Pretty well backed up what the lovely ladies told him from their shop in Vancouver.

Yep, here in America, you can still buy tobacco, which is a proven poison, not just to those who choose to use it, but to others in their vicinity, but some cheese is unlawful. This stuff is pasturized but somehow it is still a threat to the American way of life. OK, it is French but this started before France disagreed with the chimp in chief about invading Iraq, and I still find products from France availiable here.

Makeing the nation safe from terrorist involves blue cheese? :wtf:
Oh, yeah, the Patriot Act is not playing here in my little corner of Rural America. Especially as we read about thug police forces holding high school kids at gunpoint in school hallways and see other examples of ridiculous impositons on rights that serve no purpose but to try and intimidate the masses and let a few nazi wannabes exercise their baser drives. The PTA meetings here abouts would get real interesting if police held the students here at gunpoint.

it should be repealed immediately, IMO. I've felt that way since that evil document was first mentioned.

Last Sunday on Now with Bill Moyers Bob Barr pointed out that they would do it by inserting small paragraphs into spending bills.

<clips>

... BRANCACCIO: What do you think about this apparent strategy to insert a little paragraph here into a new law? Or maybe a little paragraph there instead of trying to push for a whole new PATRIOT Act II?

BARR: I always hate to tell people I told them so. But I've been warning for months now that in the wake of the adverse reaction to the initial draft of what I call the Son of PATRIOT Act early this year, the government would probably switch tactics to start trying to insert separate specific provisions of it into other bills. And that's particularly dangerous during the final few months of any Congressional session when all of the spending bills come up.

So this doesn't surprise me. It's very unfortunate that the government is doing this. But it's happened time and again. I remember it from the years that I spent in the Congress. And I'm sure that we'll see it again. It's sort of an underhanded way of doing it. But it's common practice in Washington.

transcript...

this was done in the $87 bln Iraq bill--one little line and this is how they'll push through the draconian laws they're after.

<Here's how it works. Buried deep inside the 77-page Senate Intelligence Authorization bill, parts of which are classified, comes a one paragraph provision titled — listen carefully; it's not fine print, it's the title: MODIFICATION TO DEFINITION OF FINANCIAL INSTITUTION IN THE RIGHT TO FINANCIAL PRIVACY ACT.>

<We talked to the American Civil Liberties Union and they told us the legislation allows the FBI to secretly sift through our financial transactions with car dealers, travel agencies, post offices, casinos, pawnbrokers, as well as securities dealers and currency exchanges, all without a judge's approval. >

I just can't accept Barr's rationalization for voting for the Patriot Act.