Who Can Really Say?

I support a Constitutional Amendment that would read something like this:

Congress shall make no law with a title that is contrived to create a politically manipulative acronym, nor a law that otherwise has as it's title a phrase that suggests the law will indeed accomplish the statement in the title.

Perhaps I go to far. I mean, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 did indeed obtain some civil rights, so maybe the second clause needs some work. But help me out here. The full name of the Patriot Act is (drum roll please): Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism. Maybe it's just me, but I'd prefer if Congress's laws achieved half of the title's aspirations, with judge a tad less cynicism.

Be that as it may, Instapundit notes the first of a series on the Patriot Act at Law.com:

"The USA Patriot Act has become a brand," says Georgetown University Law Center professor Viet Dinh, who was instrumental in drafting the act as head of the DOJ's legal policy shop from 2001 to 2003. "Activists lump everything that is objectionable about the war on terror, anything wrong with the world really, onto the USA Patriot Act. No more than 10 percent of what people ascribe to the USA Patriot Act on any given day, is in the Patriot Act itself."

I wish I'd thought of that objection when I was opposing it. But while I think that the Patriot Act was a bad idea, and that most of it consisted of longstanding bureaucratic wishlists that had little to do with fighting terror, I also think that we still haven't seen any sort of very useful analysis of what has worked and what hasn't. This article is a good start at unpacking the debate, but we need much more.

I think he's right, especially about the what has worked and what hasn't part.