My post yesterday on whether the Patriot Act should also include provisions dedicated to the war against meth produced (as so often from The Corner’s readership) an interesting and enlightening range of comments including the point that such legislation was already in place in a number of states and questioning why this should be a matter for the feds. One lawyer with a background in criminal justice attacked the federal law as mere “window dressing” and grumbled about the “craven pol” that introduced it. Good comments all, but I should reiterate the key problem here – that the Patriot Act is, by its very nature, ‘exceptional’ legislation (or it ought to be), and it is far easier to defend it (as, largely, I would), if its reach is confined only, and strictly, to the exceptional – to the terrorist threat. Every derogation from that principle (and there have been quite a few), however worthy, obviously waters down this exceptionalism and makes the law less easy to defend.

Meanwhile a ’senate aide’ writes to say that, contrary to what I had suggested, this provision was indeed “fully debated”. That’s a fair point (apologies for my error in this respect), but it doesn’t detract from the larger one: that the Patriot Act should focus only on terrorism and its support systems..