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I’ve been reading a lot lately (more on that later), so I’ve been frequenting the Prince George’s County Memorial Library in Hyattsville, Md. I fondly remember going to the C. Burr Artz Public Library in Frederick with my parents and brother as a kid at least monthly. I’m not sure that I read even half of what I checked out, but I really enjoyed the outing more than anything: the sad librarians who had given up on their dreams and settled as bookpushers, the homeless who would crowd the seating areas and sleep under the day’s News-Post, the discirculated books that sold for 10 cents–I loved it all.

Anyway I wanted a way to keep track of what I’m reading, and there’s this handy “Activate Reading History” button on my online account page. I went to click it, and the following ominous dialog box came up:

Thanks, Patriot Act. I guess I could just do it anyway, but be sure not to read any books that are terrorism how-tos or about subverting the government. But that’s not much of a compromise.

I decided to do some Internet research. Here’s a 2005 congressional report (PDF) on the efficacy of the Patriot Act’s library records provision. (As of the time of its writing, there hadn’t been a single use of it, but it was finally used at least once after the report came out.) Also back in 2005, the House bipartisanly voted to curb this specific provision, but it was never enacted into law. Fast forward to the present: On Friday a democrat-controlled Congress voted to extend the library provision (and other civil liberties-squeezing surveillance measures) until 2011, and Obama signed it into law yesterday. Dude, c’mon.