Under cover of darkness

Downsize DC reports that the Senate Intelligence Committee will hold a hearing on the USA PATRIOT Act tomorrow — with no notice to the rest of the world, with an eye towards extending it indefinitely.

Regardless of what you may think of the Act itself, holding secret, off-record hearings (who's being heard?) is an unconscionable mixture of the ridiculous and the reprehensible, and should be discouraged. I've already dropped a note to the two Senators from Oklahoma, though neither is actually on the Intelligence Committee. (Write your own joke.) Who knows what sort of mischief sixteen Senators can concoct? I'd just as soon not find out.