Glenn Reynolds has repeatedly criticized the use of Patriot Act provisions in ordinary law enforcement. The most recent example of this involves the use of the sneak-and-peek search provisions in a criminal case involving cock fighting.

"But cock fighting is awful!" you might say. Yes, and you might say that about a whole host of other crimes. But there's no constitutional Fourth Amendment exception for particularly "awful" or "icky" crimes.

What really bothers me is that I supported the Patriot Act in the wake of 9/11 based on the reassurances from the president and the Congress that these broad new powers were needed to go after terrorists. What shocked me the most today was to read that the vast majority of the time in these sneak and peek cases, terrorism has nothing to do with the invocation of the Patriot Act:

"This is one of the few provisions of the Patriot Act that was sneaked into the Patriot Act in the middle of the night so that no one knew it was there," said Michelle Richardson, a legislative consultant for the ACLU's Washington, D.C., Legislative Office. "It was passed without everyone knowing about it."

Prior to the Patriot Act, she said, federal courts had held that agents could conduct secret searches and defer notifying the targets for short periods of time in very limited circumstances, such as when someone's life might be in danger.

"But this broadens it to include (the risk of) interference with an investigation, and this creates a sort of catch-all for law enforcement when it's inconvenient for them to follow the rules," she said.

She also said federal authorities aren't required to release information on how many of the searches are done each year, although in 2005 the government confirmed that only 12 percent of them were related to terrorism.

"The rest are mostly drug cases," she said. "They don't even purport that this is a terrorism tool."

This case makes me ashamed of myself for supporting the Patriot Act. It's looking like Glenn's earlier characterization was quite accurate:

...this had more to do with finding an excuse to enact bureaucratic wishlists into law than with protecting us from terrorism.

Despite the wish lists of bureaucrats, let's remember who the real enemy is. And let's take the war to him, not to the American people.

Don't sacrifice freedom. It's freedom, as President Bush pointed out, that we're defending.

I feel conned, but at I can't say I wasn't warned. What might the Janet Reno Waco team do with these extraordinary powers? (Don't laugh. Such times may come again, only in updated form.)

I don't know how to atone.

Should I send money to the ACLU?