The problem of the Patriot Act: I respectfully disagree with FBI director Robert Mueller who said it's not the Patriot Act that is the problem it is the implementation of the Patriot Act that is the problem.

When one gives government broad sweeping extra constitutional powers one can be sure someone somewhere in the government will abuse that power. For anyone in this country who has been a law abiding citizen who may disagree strongly with a government position to have to worry that someone may be looking in his mail, snooping into ones email, phone conversations or worry about other egregious infringements by government upon their rights we have become like those countries we have fought so hard against. This is a travesty. Worse than a travesty it takes up unnecessary time in our fight in the war against terror.

We need to be very prudent as to whom we investigate and limit our efforts to those people who indeed are nearly a certain risk. Wasting time, effort, manpower and money collecting humongous caches of information on those who clearly are benign entities is ridiculous and does more to make God forbid a terrorist act more likely because it drains the resources we need to use to fight the real threats.

Government becomes the problem when the powers the people bestow upon government are egregiously abridged. The Patriot Act, although I once benignly supported it, seems to have become the problem as those who enforce it can and will, if given the opportunity, most certainly abuse it.