PATRIOT Game, Set and Match

David Weigel | October 6, 2006

Last year, and earlier this year, I argued that the PATRIOT Act was more unpopular than Washington wags realized and that politicians out in flyover country were getting some mileage out of attacking the Act.

Well, here's proof. Last week Montana's endangered Republican Senator Conrad Burns seized on an applause line Democrat Jon Tester used in a debate - "I don't want to amend the PATRIOT Act, I want to repeal it" - with a hack-ass 60 seconder about how the only thing keeping Osama's henchmen from the citizens of Bozeman and Billings is the government's ability to sneak into library records. Tester, who presided over the state Senate's condemnation of the Act, responded with one of the best ads I've seen all year.

Maybe there's something to this Libertarian Democrat stuff after all. That'd be nice.