USA Patriot Act II Partly Enacted

Thanks to FOR Russ Williams for forwarding this interesting tidbit from the San Antonio Current alt weekly newspaper. Generalissimo El Busho, it seems, took advantage of the Saddam capture hype to sneak part of the neofascist USA-Patriot Act II legislation into law without the trouble of unseemly public debate.

A brief cut:

The Bush Administration and its Congressional allies tucked away these new executive powers in the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2004, a legislative behemoth that funds all the intelligence activities of the federal government. The Act included a simple, yet insidious, redefinition of “financial institution,” which previously referred to banks, but now includes stockbrokers, car dealerships, casinos, credit card companies, insurance agencies, jewelers, airlines, the U.S. Post Office, and any other business “whose cash transactions have a high degree of usefulness in criminal, tax, or regulatory matters.”