The USA PATRIOT ACT, cattle-prodded through Congress with very few pols actually reading it, is supposed to be an anti-terrorist measure. Its name is a Mad Magazine acronym for (take a deep breath) Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act. (Poet Laureate yes, but who knew Congress had a Gag Writer Laureate?)

What it actually does is create the gun-and-badge wet dream of the All American Police State. Now, worse than ever, our lives will be infested with federal enforcers' body parts: eyes ogling our email, ears filtering our phone chats, fingers fondling our "papers and effects" (as the Fourth Amendment so eloquently put it), feet tromping throughout our homes during secret searches, noses thrust indiscriminately into our faces at every turn, well fed asses festooning secret Star Chamber judicial benches.

An honest, non-doublespeak acronym for the USA PATRIOT Act would be Usual Suspects Alert: Politicians Attacking Traditional Rights Instead Of Terrorists Act. (Can't let myself be out-absurded by a Gag Writer Laureate.)

Is anyone willing to bet that these invasive body politic searches will be confined to finding terrorists? Long after the last jihad warrior goes off to party with his houri in Paradise Estates we'll all be microbes on an Office of Home Security lab slide. Unknowingly follow a link to a militia web site? A dossier will be opened in your honor. Tell someone on the phone to "stick to your guns"? That'll get you a listing on a national violence watch list. Send an email containing one of a thousand trigger words? Echelon will gobble it up, providing Carnivore doesn't make a meal of it first. Innocently drive past a crack house? That'll get your license plate photographed, your face digitally recorded and your car ransacked from bug screen to libertarian bumper sticker.

When we all have at least one felony mark on our foreheads there'll be nobody left to vote. Won't that make our future Lifetime Incumbents happy? But there is some "good news" in all of this. The USA PATRIOT Act (hereinafter called "The Act") will generate millions of unionized prison guard jobs in the incarceration industry. Assuming, of course, that enough people can still be found outside the walls.

The Act even offers a definition of terrorism (take another deep breath): "Engaging in activity that involves acts dangerous to human life that violate the laws of the United States or any state and appear to be intended: (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination or kidnapping."

Did you notice the "appear to" weasel words which deviously transform a fish hook into a trawler's net? If you're a pro athlete with a name like Abdul Muhammed Rashid Mustafah Ali Baba ben Akbar Wide Receiver, better change it to Guido Smith. Skip the shish-ka-bob on the Steaks R Us menu. Hide your Afghans (dogs, carpets, shawls, foreign exchange students, whatever). Don't prop your feet on that ottoman. Any of these things might make you "appear to" intimidate or coerce someone, especially to the herky-jerky beef jerky knee-jerky "patriots" who think love of country = love of gov.

What Libertarians and fellow traveling Liberty Bell ringers would like is a USA PATRIOT Act that protects us from our own government's terrorists. Don't our political mullahs engage in acts dangerous to human life (like the FDA delaying life-saving drugs for decades while thousands die because one-in-a-million side effects might cause hair to grow on your tonsils)? Don't they try to influence the governance of our own lives through intimidation (IRS) or coercion (The War Against Black Teenage Ghetto Boys Who Use Drugs But Not Against White Hollywood Actors Who Use Drugs)? Don't they affect the peaceful conduct of our lives by engaging in mass destruction (Waco), assassination (Ruby Ridge) or kidnapping (news item from CNSNews.com - The U.S. Selective Service System (SSS) is ready to reinstate the draft if ordered by Congress and President Bush)?

Oh. Waitaminnit. I forgot. We already have something that's supposed to protect us from our own government. It's not called a USA PATRIOT Act. It's called COTUSOA ATBOR. Better known as the Constitution of the United States of America and the Bill of Rights.

Oh. Waitaminnit again. You say we're already being protected by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights?

I'd like to nominate you as the next Gag Writer Laureate.