OT: US civil liberties under attack again!

[Baron Munchausen]

I wasn't aware that we had any 'civil liberties' left. You do know that a huge number of provisions in the Patriot Act and 'supplements' (Patriot II broken up into small segments so it could be snuck through Congress) are officially secret? They've passed all sorts of crazy laws that the public would never accept if they knew about them, but made it illegal to report them so the public doesn't know and so doesn't protest. The ACLU is currently fighting at least one lawsuit over one of these provisions and had to get the judge to approve before it could even talk about having filed the lawsuit. Something to do with 'national security letters' (search warrants without a judge's approval) but the details cannot be discussed because the law itself forbids publicity.