A tiny town shouts 'Whoa!' to Patriot Act

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

By Ron C. Judd
Seattle Times staff reporter

TONASKET, Okanogan County — If this is a hotbed of sedition, they're hiding it pretty well.

In fact, the most suspicious group activity on this scorching day in Tonasket, the bellybutton of the Okanogan Valley, is the alarming number of people eating ice-cream cones, all at once, down at Shannon's on the south edge of town.

Plenty of vanillas in the crowd. Radical these folks are not.

But you don't have to dig very deep at Tonasket City Hall to find the small seed of a populist uprising planted this spring and spreading like cheatgrass down to the county courthouse in Okanogan — and beyond.

It's a simple, two-page resolution supporting the constitutional rights of Tonasket's 1,000 citizens — and directly opposing one of the most significant acts of Congress in recent history.

"The Tonasket Resolution" is a symbolic broadside at the USA Patriot Act, the far-reaching "terror-obstruction" measure approved by Congress six weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and the Washington, D.C., area.

-more-

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2001461096_patriot10m.html

[Ohio Dem]

1. Good for them.

It's time the real people started acting like the government belongs to them instead of the other war around.

[Cha]

2. Yea! Tonasket! I love Rebels!

[Pallas180]

3. The question is are any of the dem candidates talking about repealing it?

.

[WindRavenX]

4. Yes, Kucinich said he would repeal it if elected

Which is great to hear.
My gut feeling is a lot of the Democrats want to repeal the PATRIOT ACT but essentially cannot speak up about it with the current political enviroment being extremely hostile to being defiant of Shrub...

[Zhade]

5. Well, they need to redeem themselves.

So they'd either better speak out, or get the hell out of our way.

Enough of the complicitous cowardice, I say.

[BiggJawn]

6. Yes, as a matter of fact...

Dennis is campaigning hard about repealing it.