My last post referred to my personal drive to read Supreme Court decisions largely so I can get at least some news "from the horse's mouth." In the interest of full disclosure, I haven't yet read the Patriot Act. I've tried, but aside from the first section (basically an official statement by Congress that the US doesn't hate all Muslims), the Patriot Act is just a litany of "amends section 235 by erasing the comma in the third sentence, changing the period in subsection (c) with a semicolon, and adding the phrase 'unless the President believes it's a good idea' to sub-subsection 4."

I read the entire Brazilian Constitution and Amendments (roughly 200 pages of legal Portuguese), and Dependency and Development in Latin America (about 150 pages of good material with all the life sucked out and academic wording substituted for any exciting passages, it's a great book that I simply can't force anyone to read). I know I physically can read the Patriot Act, but I don't think I'll get anything out of it.

Of course, that could be the point.