Salon -- Right-wing activists team up with the left-wing ACLU to bash the PATRIOT Act.

The Justice Department is not amused.

The conservative activists' main complaint seemed to focus on how broadly these laws meant to target suspected terrorists could be applied. "You're a suspect," Waters said at the beginning of her remarks, pointing to a reporter in the audience. "Everyone in this room is a suspect until it's proven that you're not." Barr said that the "approach reflected by many of these initiatives" would allow the government to "gather information on law-abiding citizens" in an unconstitutional fashion.

The conservatives come to the debate from a different perspective than the ACLU's Murphy, of course, which means that some of their concerns don't even register with their liberal counterparts. Like the fear that the government wants to begin recording how many guns citizens own; or that the surveillance of antiwar protesters today will lead to surveillance of antiabortion protesters tomorrow. Police powers have a way of mission-creeping, they said; racketeering laws were passed to go after the mob, but have since been used against antiabortion groups. They passed because lawmakers thought, "Do whatever you want to guys named Guido -- that doesn't affect me," Norquist said. "Someday Hillary Clinton's going to be attorney general and I hope conservatives keep that in mind."

"Or president!" Murphy exclaimed, flustering Norquist a bit.