Be very afraid! You know they’re out to kill us, every one of us. You are not safe, you can not hide! You must hide, hideous and riddled with fear. And you are absolutely forbidden to think; for yourself or anybody else. (Especially your representative government.) Shut up! Sit in your hovel and tremble! The America you were raised in is gone and if you have anything to say about that you will be gone too.

Sad but true, this how I feel every time the fear mongers start talking about how important the Patriot Act is to the safety of Americans. It happened again this week.

But first, we had flashy arrests. It’s pre-dawn in the Central Valley of Northern California, early enough to make the morning news. Preceded with news reports of how school children’s lunches are in danger of being terrorists targets. The markets are just opening, they’ll have all day to digest this. Nobody should get hurt.

And as if nobody should be surprised by this: “W” starts an intricately planned and well coordinated stump for the Patriot Act tomorrow.

But, hold on for just a second. That’s next. Let’s look at the culprit from Lodi. Let us first not forget that Hamid Hayat is a natural born US citizen, due all the constitutional protection that everyone one of us, born in the USA, consider a natural right. Yet, it appears on the face that he was not afforded even the basic protections of counsel or against self incrimination. He is charged with lying to police authorities. Because he changed his story. How did that happen? Why would he do that? Did his lawyer, present while he was questioned, stop him and advise him he could remain silent? That changing his story now is a violation of current laws and he would be better off if he didn’t mention that. If his lawyer didn’t tell him, they could be disbarred. Or was he being questioned without a lawyer at his side?

Even so, he was born and raised in America. He must have know that he had the right to remain silent. Just clam up dummy. You’re an American. They can’t coerce you to incriminate yourself, there’s the Fifth Amendment to protect you. Oh, I forgot, he’s a Muslim. He’s heard about Gitmo. I’m sure he knows, or knows of a community member, a prisoner that’s being held there. And there’s no way that, with his lawyer present, they threatened him with endless lockup. No way!

Granted, in situations where faithful radicals intend to do harm or create mass damage we must stop them before they act. Much like the Columbine syndrome, the threat must be taken seriously and stopped whenever possible.

The question becomes how does that happen with out completely throwing out constitutional guarantees and divide our citizenry into an us and them conundrum. This is no longer a slippery slope, we have fallen into the abyss and may never return. The law now allows surveillance at the whim of law enforcement, without a judge’s oversight and constitutional protections irrelevant. Soon, we may face a rampant police state or religious prosecution or any of the other abuses history has witnessed, but we ignore at our peril.