I'm not an expert on the Patriot Act, but I confess that my general impression of it is negative (all these libertarians I hang around with, I guess).

But my colleague Nathan Sales has a column in the Christian Science Monitor that gives me some pause. His argument is that the Act itself is fundamentally ok and not really that radical and that its proper use is a matter of prudence and oversight not a radical limiting of its reach (or its elimination). For a skeptic like me, I found it to be quite thought-provoking.