The stupid part is that if there was any genuine concern with stopping the flow of heroin out of Afghanistan, the Taliban would still be in place. They had all but stopped the production of poppy. Yet the first season after the Taliban was ousted the production went from 180 tons to nearly 4000 tons.

Read Crossing the Rubicon in it there's a good explanation why the drug war is so important to the world economy. Basically, the drug cartels use big business to launder their money, big business uses the drug money to make major purchases at lower cost to them than if they borrowed the money from banks, and the prison/law industries need the drug users to keep their prisons and court rooms full, so they can keep the public thinking they need more cops and jails.

There's far more money to be made for everyone concerned if the Drug War continues, so don't expect to see it change any time soon.

I don't see a problem here. Drug cartels, corrupt military, and illegal immigrants are someone eles's problem, not mine.

I will admit that the clause in the law relating to the Internet had an old-person "what in the hell is all this internets?" vibe to it. However, not all law enforcement measures are presumptively bad as people who break things and hurt different people do, in fact, still exist. But I have worked on that side of the fence and I do claim a bias.

And I will also note that the internet was the second or third best method of drug cartel money laundering (depending on where you slot black market peso exchange) until the federal ML laws were tightened a few years ago and PayPal and similar transfer systems were squeezed and scrunched a little bit by the Feds.

Currently, if you really wish to launder illicit funds, I recommend a hawala.

And laws are just paper so it is pretty good paper at that level of' analysis.

It is an excellent tool to catch narcotics (illegal and prescription drug) traffickers. Even roving wiretaps are a pretty cool and wonderful thing unless you are a drug cartel or have run afoul of Karl Rove/Dick Cheney in some way.

The main problem right now with USA Patriot is that Bush keeps creating all of these 'secretive' organizations within the Department of Defense and Department of Justice and abuses the provisions of the Act by walling off any oversight mechanisms. Not to mention the fact that Bush routinely sidesteps legal obligations through his signing statements. Traditional Soviet statism at its worst.