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SUMMARY: Administration clings to expanded power to investigate without evidence that easy-to-abuse law really helps.

From our vantage out here in the hinterlands, the hearings held by the national commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks offer reason for optimism. While it's painfully true that two administrations, the intelligence community and law enforcement agencies failed to prevent the attacks, hindsight suggests they simply failed to grasp the significance of numerous clues. Also, it wasn't until the first jetliner slammed into the World Trade Center that Americans - including most of their top leaders - fully understood the nature of al-Qaida's threat. The danger is better understood today, and that makes us feel safer.

But it also makes us more resistant to the Bush administration's renewed campaign to extend the USA Patriot Act, especially the provisions that seem more likely to undermine the liberties of law-abiding Americans than deter any terrorists. The law liberalizes procedures for wire taps, allows authorities to secretly search bank records, library use and other personal information of anyone loosely suspected of terrorism. Some of the provisions invite agencies to resume the misdeeds of the FBI under its longtime Director J. Edgar Hoover, whose agents compiled extensive files on large numbers of lawful citizens involved in the civil rights, anti-war and labor movements.

On the campaign trail this week, President Bush reiterated his insistence that the Patriot Act is essential to America's security. The only evidence of this assertion is the so-called Lackawanna Six, the half-dozen Yemeni-Americans from upstate New York who pleaded guilty to charges stemming from their attending an al-Qaida training camp in Afghanistan. We don't have much sympathy for those men, who contend they meant no harm to America. But not even the government suggests they were involved in any kind of plot to attack America.

And that's it. That's the president's case for vastly expanding the police powers of the government. There's nothing but vague assertions to suggest this law has done anything to make America safer.

Meanwhile, we're learning from the Sept. 11 commission that - long before Congress passed the Patriot Act in a moment of crisis - that under existing laws, the FBI, CIA and other agencies came very close to uncovering and perhaps preventing the Sept. 11 attacks. The information on hand, viewed with today's understanding of the dangers, might well have saved that fateful day. So far, it appears Sept. 11 involved a failure to piece together useful information, not a lack of information.

As the saying goes, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The Patriot Act comes too close to giving law enforcers absolute power.

There's no doubt that laws will need refining as America works to perfect its defense against terrorism. Let the Bush administration make its case for particular provisions of the Patriot Act, offering proof that the provisions actually are being put to good use. But don't try to tell us that the grab-bag of provisions thrown together just days after the Sept. 11 attacks is the best that Congress can do.

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