VIEWPOINT Patriot Act 2.0 - Are they kidding? By Brandon Rhodes, Eugene Representative, CNP (2/09/2003) They are at it again. A document was recently disclosed from the US federal Justice Department indicating they will ask federal lawmakers to commit for further erosions to the civil liberties of all Cascadians. The bill would allow the very loosely defined catergory of people known as "suspected terrorists" to be detained, investigated, and tried completely in secret and without so much as court supervision. With every Cascadian's natural right to be left alone already seriously in breach by the federal government's sweeping post-9/11 USA PATRIOT Act, this recent developement only reinforces the Cascadian National Party's belief that centalized power will invariably decay into corruption, becoming dangerous to individual liberties, freedom from monopoly, peace, justice, democracy, and the environment. Indeed, the CNP is so distrusting of centralization, we feel a safe modus operandi when drafting any bill is, "Would you still vote for it if Hitler were president?" If the US Congress were as cautious as many Americans called for them to, and heeded the CNP's proverb, the USA PATRIOT Act would have never failed, and the coming JD-proposed bill wouldn't make it to the floor. Finally, let us reflect on the rationale behind these sweeping, atrocious bills. Simply put, the spin put out by the federal US intelligence community has typically been that they simply did not see the attacks of September 11 coming: they didn't have the information there, they say. Yet we know now that one of the most central reasons for the FBI, CIA, and NSA's failure to intervene in the 9/11 attacks was that they had too much information. They were literally overloaded with intelligence information, and the clues of 9/11 could well have been buried at the bottom of a stack of documents minding the businesses of Cascadians and persons worldwide. Indeed, it was not a lack of powers that caused for the intelligence complex to fail that day, but too many powers. So why, then, does the Justice Department want more powers? Your guess is as good as the Cascadian National Party's. In the meantime, we'll add this to our long list of reasons to abandon the sinking ship of America and form the Republic of Cascadia.