From WNYC in New York, this is on the media with a special hour on the Patriot Act.

From its birth in the ashes of 9-11 to this weekend's hamstrung debate on reform.

The Attorney General has fired the first partisan shot since September 11th.

Virtually no one in this chamber, you have any idea what's in that bill.

The Patriot Act on balance was good.

The French government decided to use fear that new terrorist attacks could happen to pass this law.

We are in a different place as a country than we were right after 9-11.

There is much more of an effort to find where the balance is.

Come, whatever happens with the surveillance reform bill, people are going to think that that's the end of the story.

It is barely the beginning of the story.

What we do and don't really know about the Patriot Act.

Stay with us.

From WNYC in New York, this is On the Media. I'm Bob Garfield.

And I'm Brooke Gladstone. This week will be present at the creation of the Patriot Act,

a blitzkrieg maneuver that set the stage for the bruising battle now underway in Congress.

It's still unresolved as we record this.

But it could be resolved by the time you hear this. Production cycles, alas, are unforgiving.

But never mind. We decided to proceed because no matter what happens on Capitol Hill,

the fundamental struggle between security and civil liberties won't end,

even if the Patriot Act spontaneously combusts, which it won't.

So let's, for the moment, move away from the current legislative battle to the very beginning,

a tortured acronym that kind of said it all,

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