If the local media were to be believed ad verbum, then the United States might as well blow up their symbolic Statue of Liberty or perhaps ask magician David Copperfield to make it disappear for good.

I am not sufficiently qualified in US laws nor have the full facts about the Patriot Act. But when the Malaysian de facto Law Minister Rais Yatim claimed that the US Attorney-General has "positively endorsed" the repressive Internal Security Act by virtue of having a similar Patriot Act, I would like to know what the official US version is. Where does one draw a line when fact is fiction or fiction becomes fact? Is the ISA the Patriot Act and vice versa?

Where in the whole article is the quotation from the US attorney-general himself? Or, if according to their very American practice of airing live broadcast of press statements, why is this all-important crucial clip not aired on our television? It would have been broadcasted repeatedly just like what the government-controlled TV stations did with the Memali clips that also showed the horrific execution of a woman by the Taliban in Afghanistan in the run-up to the last two by-elections.

If one were to read the article critically, it appears that the law minister himself has given his own opinion of what he construes to be the US attorney-general's justification-cum-explanation of the Patriot Act. Does the US attorney-general have even the minutest idea of what the ISA is?

But then again, if the US Consulate were to deny the statement, our dapper de facto law minister would fall back to the old excuse of being 'misquoted' again. Works every time.