Decisive action has been taken on the home front with passage of the USA Patriot Act, which has strengthened the hand of law enforcement agencies to stop terrorists before they can act.

Several other aerospace and defense firms have announced plans to build facilities in north Mississippi in recent weeks. They join an impressive group of high-tech companies already doing business in our region.

One of the first items of Congressional business in 2006 will be an effort to renew the USA Patriot Act.

It may have hastened the move of the former Minority Leader Trent Lott, to the private sector because there was such an outpouring of bitter criticism...The result, if this is successful, will not be much different from what Sen. Lott and others were trying to enact back then...It may be that we are all just older and wiser.

Since 2001, the Patriot Act has provided the means to detect and disrupt terrorist threats against the U.S. Prior to enactment of the law, major legal barriers prevented intelligence, national defense, and law enforcement agencies from working together and sharing information.

The private sector can go forward, if it must, with destruction of embryos for questionable and ethically challenged science. But spend the people's money on proven blood cord, bone marrow, germ cell, and adult cell research.

Civil libertarians have raised concerns that some of the Patriot Act's provisions infringe on Constitutional rights. Those concerns are not supported by the facts.