The public doesn't really know whether or not it's been used because there's a gag order that forbids people who witness Federal agents acting under its provisions from speaking up. It's a felony to talk about it to anyone, for which people can be sent to jail for years, and yes, you guessed it, no one is allowed to talk about that either. We are told that it hasn't been used; we have Attorney General Ashcroft's word for it. Yeah. If I want to know about the henhouse, I'd rather hear it from the hens than from the fox.

Yeah, and there is no evidence that thousands of people a night aren't abducted by aliens and returned with all evidence and memories completely erased.

I'm sorry, but this thesis is a truckload of horse apples. Do you honestly think that if dozens or hundreds of people were being abused by the Patriot Act, that not a single one would come forward to make a politically-popular test case out of it? Knowing damn well that five hundred liberal attorneys would line up in front of them in a flying wedge, while the media strewed flowers in their path, and news shows lined up for interviews? Such a person would be Hero of the Hour to the Left, and the chance of anything bad actually happening to them would be exceedingly remote, even assuming Ashcroft or his people would be mind-bogglingly stupid enough to actually invoke the "gag order" under these public circumstances.

For that matter, has anyone even told anyone anonymously that they have suffered serious abuse, and been threatened with legal action if they told? Have you seen any accounts like this in well-known internet news and opinion sites?

And please don't tell me about someone erasing records or something out of "fear." The fear has been generated by only one side on this.