Patriot Act: Can It Be Repealed?

The short answer is "no."

(This post is put up with the intention of tugging the chain of a very respectable blogger-colleague--whose opinion on the Patriot Act is just plain wrong.)

It was obvious to me at the time DHS and Patriot Act (and TSA!) were bad moves. Aside from the fact that amalgamating many inefficient bureaucracies into one multiplies not divides the inefficiencies - efficient government is not an overriding concern of mine - centralizing power to meet a crisis leaves the centralized power available for abuse long after the crisis is forgotten. The chances that a future Democrat administration would disband DHS and repeal Patriot Act were patently zero even at the time. Expand, politicize, and abuse now are the order of the day, and I am not surprised in the least.

Both major parties seem now irredeemably statist.

...Arguing that Washington has become overlarge in the nation's affairs and that power should flow back to the regions and the people, that the 10th Amendment means what it says, seems as if its time may have arrived as the common ground for a new governing coalition.

It seems highly unlikely that all the factions the Republicans would need to unite to govern from the center-right will ever again simultaneously trust them (or anyone) with the current scale of massively centralized Federal power. Nor should we. Too many Republicans have swallowed far too many contradictions, have met the enemy and become them.

The Federalist Party. It has a certain ring.

While it is true that the intentions were good, it's also clear that Ben Franklin was right: giving up liberties in favor of 'security' will get you neither. Now we have a Fed Intel outfit which is tapping domestic-to-domestic phone calls (unintentionally, they say); an FBI which can effectively write its own search warrants, and a DHS bureaucracy which seriously opines that pro-lifers and federalists are 'potential terrorists.'

HT: The Winning McCain