Judge deals blow to Patriot Act

[LostInTime]

CNET News
By Declan McCullagh
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
Published: September 6, 2007, 1:11 PM PDT

A key portion of the Patriot Act is unconstitutional and violates Americans' free speech rights, a federal judge said Thursday in a case that could represent a bitter setback for the Bush administration's attempts to expand its surveillance powers.

U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero said the section of the Patriot Act that permits the FBI to send Internet service providers secret demands, called national security letters, for customer information violates the First Amendment and unreasonably curbs the authority of the judiciary.

[lisagurl]

Read "How should a Patriot Act"

[ChildOfTheLight]

All summer, it has seemed that every week another piece of the Constitution is carved out like a leg or a breast of Thanksgiving turkey.  It's good to hear about people who are standing up against it.

[Lisbeth]

WOO HOO! That is great!!! I have always hated the PATRIOT ACT (and its name is so deceitful, what is patriotic about stripping our constitutional rights??)

"Patriot: the person who can holler the loudest without knowing what he is hollering about."
--Mark Twain, More Maxims of Mark

"We teach [our citizens] to take their patriotism at second-hand; to shout with the largest crowd without examining into the right or wrong of the matter--exactly as boys under monarchies are taught and have always been taught. We teach them to regard as traitors, and hold in aversion and contempt, such as do not shout with the crowd, and so here in our democracy we are cheering a thing which of all things is most foreign to it and out of place--the delivery of our political conscience into somebody else's keeping. This is patriotism on the Russian plan."
--Mark Twain, a Biography