Aha. So now we know why Bush waited to wheel out Saddam when he did. Whilst the world was distracted with the convenient capture of Saddam, Bush quietly and quickly pushed through a vast change to the Patriot Act in the hopes that nobody would notice. The Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2004 grants the FBI unprecedented power to obtain records from financial institutions without requiring permission from a judge. Under the law, the FBI does not need to seek a court order to access such records, nor does it need to prove just cause.

Another part of the constitution chewed away then.

Meanwhile, it seems that all us motorcyclists are not only hooligans and criminals, we're now terrorists too. There was a knee-jerk panic in Paris as a woman with a heated motorbike jacket got on board a jet bound for Cincinatti. Apparently airport officials don't know the difference between a heated motorbike jacket and a bomb. She was arrested on terrorism charges before they bothered to check.

Morons.

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