Southack -- you and I could not be farther apart ideologically. I won't try to change your mind.
"It is proper to take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties. We hold this prudent jealousy to be the first duty of citizens, and one of the noblest characteristics of the late Revolution. The freeman of America did not wait till usurped power had strengthen[ed] itself by exercise, and entangled the question in precedents. They saw all the consequences in the principle, and they avoided the consequences by denying the principle." - James Madison, A Memorial and Remonstrance, 1785: Works 1:163
"Your problem is that you are railing against something that you haven't even read... Come back after you've read it..."
You are cautioned not to make such emphatic, declaratory statements about what I have, or have not, read -- or, to make any assumptions about my level of scholarship in general.
Feel free to disagree with me - but do not attempt to attribute my divergence with your own views to any ignorance you may perceive on my part, nor to evaluate or qualify the basis of my own views as lacking in perception of some obvious, fundamental principle.
Howard Dean is an intelligent and highly educated man, and I am at a loss to explain how he comes by his views, and I don't try to do so -- I just disagree with him.
Candidly, I see no basis for your support of the USA Patriot Act.
You don't need to endeavor to rationalize my views for me either.
In short, not only are you mistaken, but I find your accusations insulting.
Starting with the destruction of trees required to print it, then on to its purpose and short title, I find every word of the USA Patriot Act thereafter both odious and threatening. As I say, you are free to feel comforted by its efficacy - I do not.
The title itself bears an uncanny irony to the governmental doublespeak George Orwell wrote of in his prescient 1984.
To deter and punish terrorist acts in the United States and around the world, to enhance law enforcement investigatory tools, and for other purposes. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE AND TABLE OF CONTENTS.
(a) SHORT TITLE- This Act may be cited as the `Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (USA PATRIOT ACT) Act of 2001'.
"Candidly, I see no basis for your support of the USA Patriot Act. You don't need to endeavor to rationalize my views for me either. In short, not only are you mistaken, but I find your accusations insulting. Starting with the destruction of trees required to print it, then on to its purpose and short title, I find every word of the USA Patriot Act thereafter both odious and threatening. As I say, you are free to feel comforted by its efficacy - I do not." 
You've clearly not read the harmless Patriot Act to have such wild-eyed opinions about it.
You've cited not a word of its actual legal code that could be construed as threatening to yourself, either.
Nor can you.
I've read it. It provides some useful tools to law enforcement and Homeland Security, especially in regard to monitoring bank fund transfers to and from terrorist-sympathizing nations, but it tramples on not one right of U.S. citizens, and contrary to your earlier wrong-headed assertation, law enforcement and Homeland Security still must obtain court orders to perform seaches, even the so-called "secret" ones.