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The Bush Presidency is not tyrannical. The rule of law has not been suspended. Just for the sake of argument why don't you give us your definition of tyranny?

You are saying that lying to the American public by giving them information that was allready known to be inacurate isn't breaking one little law anywhere? Or, torturing POW's isn't breaking any military or civllian laws?? hmm..

My god, man.

blah blah blah.. Are we now only accepting one very narrow definition of tyranny? Are we not familiar with parody, satire, hyperbole?

Sheesh...

Here's my definition of tyranny: Shut up.

I think there is a difference between breaking the laws of man and being subject to no law. Therein lies the heart of tyranny.

The media remains free to report.
Congress remains free to legislate (read the War Powers Act).
The Supreme Court maintains its independence.
We can post whatever we want on these blogs and none of us are subject to arrest or harrasement.

Hell, the Patriot Act just applied long standing RICO statutes to terror investigation. If it's good enough for the Mob, it should be good enough for Al Queda.

Get a grip: we are a very long way away from tyranny. Unless, of course, you are a Libertarian. Then it's just way, way too late. But they don't like Democrats either, so why pay attention?

When Bush is ignoring the laws of the US, UN and whatever else, he is acting like he isn't subject to any laws at all based on the 'War of Terror' which is just anm excuse to push his hard right wing agenda through the Republican maj. of Congress...

It always feels silly to state the obvious, but some people clearly require it, so here goes: The headline was a joke. The use of the word "tyrrany" was a joke. It was hyperbole. Sarcasm. And it was also, by the way, funny. Until Fritz showed up. Of course, Fritz is funny too, but he can't help that. Fritz, you see, thinks that the PATRIOT Act is the same as RICO. This is funny. It is also, for the record, wrong. What the PATRIOT Act has in common with RICO is that it was shoveled through Congress like so much shit during a time of inflated fears and public hysteria, only to be digested by the state and then used as a weapon against people for whom it was decidedly not ever intended. (Such as the time, in 2000, when RICO was used by the Philly Police Commissioner to combat the "international anarchist movement or, to be completely non-partisan about it, the time that Patrick Kennedy and the DCCC decided to prosecute Tom Delay under RICO, just because he's a scumbag.) Other than the fact that RICO and PATRIOT both suck, though, they are about as similar to one another as, say, Fritz and Albert Einstein. Finally, contrary to anything Fritz seems to think, it is clear to anyone following the news lately that the mass media, the Congress, and the judiciary have long since given up any claims of original thought and, as with so many people out there, not to mention any names Fritz, they have each been systematically drowned in sickly sweet PATRIOTic rhetoric and suffocated under a gauze of blue velvet like Ashcroft's favorite tit.

WSH: just so you know, ridicule is not the same as argumentation. If Liberals are reduced to calling people names is it because they lack good arguments?

From the Department of Justice website: "As Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE) explained during the floor debate about the Act, “the FBI could get a wiretap to investigate the mafia, but they could not get one to investigate terrorists. To put it bluntly, that was crazy! What’s good for the mob should be good for terrorists.” (Cong. Rec., 10/25/01)"

From Jeff Jacoby at townhall.com:

"Take Section 215 of the Patriot Act, one of the law's most controversial. It allows investigators to obtain records and other "tangible things" in the course of a terrorism investigation. This, the ACLU informs us, means that "the FBI could spy on a person because they don't like the books she reads, or because they don't like the web sites she visits. They could spy on her because she wrote a letter to the editor that criticized government policy."

"There's just one problem with that scenario: It isn't true.

"To begin with, the FBI cannot request any documents or records without first getting judicial permission. That permission must come in the form of an order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court -- a federal court specializing in counterterrorism and international intelligence that was created by Congress during the Carter administration. No judge on that court is going to authorize government agents to spy on a citizen merely because of his reading or web-surfing habits. Why not? Because the law forbids it. Which law? Why, the Patriot Act.

"An investigation conducted under this section," Section 215 commands, "shall . . . not be conducted of a United States person solely upon the basis of activities protected by the First Amendment." In case that isn't clear enough, Section 215 says it twice. And for added protection, it directs the attorney general to tell Congress every six months exactly how many court orders have been requested, and how many of those requests have been granted."

Ha ha ha.. liberals have been reduced to name calling. That's good shit, Fritz! Conservatives never do that! You're right WSH, this guy is hilarious.

Fritz, you may not think so, but many upstanding American citizens were afraid to sign petitions or speak their mind after the Patriot Act was passed and some people were detained with flimsy or no evidence ...
Things have swung back toward the middle (like they always tend to) but there was certainly a time when so-called left-wing thinking people were afraid to express their opinions.
BTW, some of the police activities during both the Democratic convention and the Republican convention were way out of line. I was in NYC during the TNC and I personally witnessed some.

Fritz: If Republicans are reduced to calling liberals "name-callers," is it because they are out of ideas?

On the 215 point, by golly, you're right - there IS some empty rhetoric in the PATRIOT Act about civil liberties! Who'd a thunk? That aside, so what? The suggestion that PATIOT is RICO for terrorists is the kind of thing that gets bandied about on Republican web sites until it gains a head of steam, mostly becauuse liberals don't feel like wasting time debunking it, point by 215th point. Suffice it to say that, if you ever actually read the PATRIOT Act, instead of just other people's blog posts on it, you will find more than just empty rhetoric, which is precisely the problem.

Mike,

Being afraid and having something to fear are two completely different things.

In any case, I think it's completely reasonable to make a distinction between the law and abuses of the law. If a small town sheriff sets up a speed trap to harrase tourists is that an argument against speed limits or an argument against abusive use of reasonable laws?

We do still have judicial review and access to a functioning court system, do we not?

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