There’s been a lot of hubbub in the news lately about Patriot Act II. Personally, I think the Patriot Acts are just old McCarthy Era legislation that’s been dusted off and touched up. I mean, you don’t come up with a 300-page bill in two weeks, right?

The major difference is that then we were worried about communists and now we’re worried about terrorists. But the bottom line is that the government is generally worried about ists. Communists, socialists, terrorists, feminists, environmentalists, etc. But it’s inefficient to be worried about a new ist every 50 years. By the same token, the current go