<story><title>The Patriot Act Has Threatened Freedom for 20 Years</title><url>https://www.cato.org/commentary/patriot-act-has-threatened-freedom-20-years</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>smitty1e</author><text>We The People should hate on, not only the Patriot Act, but every other &amp;quot;we have to pass it to see what&amp;#x27;s in it&amp;quot; piece of vast legislation that is:&lt;p&gt;- rammed through substantially unread;&lt;p&gt;- despite its prolix nature, is hardly more than a requirements outline to be filled in by un-elected, faceless Executive Branch bureaucrats as &amp;quot;regulations&amp;quot;;&lt;p&gt;- continues to place financial burdens on unborn generations with gusto--&amp;quot;Taxation without representation&amp;quot; turned up to eleventy.&lt;p&gt;Rather than offer a standard spleen dump, the broader point for this audience that&amp;#x27;s being made is that the government isn&amp;#x27;t scalable.&lt;p&gt;The 1787 Constitution (while brilliant) is as a script that ran more-or-less well on a single instance, but has not forklifted into the cloud gracefully.&lt;p&gt;And people  are not software, but the readers of this site can make some important recommendations about how to capture the liberty we hold dear and avoid the various tyranny traps.</text></comment>
<story><title>The Patriot Act Has Threatened Freedom for 20 Years</title><url>https://www.cato.org/commentary/patriot-act-has-threatened-freedom-20-years</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>canjobear</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m confused because as far as I can tell the Patriot Act is not currently in force, having expired in 2020[0]. But it seems that everyone is proceeding as if it is still in force, as if waiting on Congress to actually renew it is just a formality? Is this really how things work?&lt;p&gt;[0] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.eff.org&amp;#x2F;deeplinks&amp;#x2F;2020&amp;#x2F;12&amp;#x2F;section-215-expired-year-review-2020&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.eff.org&amp;#x2F;deeplinks&amp;#x2F;2020&amp;#x2F;12&amp;#x2F;section-215-expired-ye...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>