William Rivers "Superfly TNT" Pitt delivered yet another slamming speech last week (he's apparently a busy guy), this time at a town hall meeting in Austin, Texas where they were considering joining hundreds of other cities across the country in repudiating the PATRIOT Act. Pitt began the speech by reiterating the true nature of patriotism:

The duty of a patriot in this time and place is to ask questions, to demand answers, to understand where our nation is headed and why. If the answers you get do not suit you, or if they frighten you, or if they anger you, it is your duty as a patriot to dissent. Freedom does not begin with blind acceptance and with a flag. Freedom begins when you say 'No.'

This set the stage for an analysis of some of the darker recesses of the PATRIOT Act, in which he concludes:

Opportunities for abuse of these broad new powers are immense, and that is the rub. Of course there must be a legal response to the crimes committed against us on September 11. But the PATRIOT Act goes much, much too far. The PATRIOT Act asks us to completely surrender that mistrust of government that caused us to make this country in the first place, that mistrust of government that is essential to our standing as free citizens. The PATRIOT Act asks us to believe that no government official would ever, ever, ever abuse these sweeping powers in the pursuit of a political agenda. Why worry? That's never happened before…

Once again, I think Pitt is right on the money. To take his critique of the PATRIOT Act a step further, I might also ask John Ashcroft, in response to his arguments for needing this array of expanded police powers, how he could possibly be sure of what is required to bolster our defenses when an adequate investigation of what failed has never been conducted. For all we know the existing investigative tools were adequate, and bureaucratic errors were to blame.