Patriot Act critics propose temporary extension

Senate Democrats proposed on Monday a three-month extension of the Patriot Act as an alternative to the Bush administration's support for a broader expansion of the law's surveillance authorities.

Sen. Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, said "we should make every effort to make this a better bill that will strengthen, instead of jeopardize, the public's faith and trust." Another Democrat, Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, has threatened a filibuster.

Leahy is a co-author of the bill, along with Republican John Sununu of New Hampshire.

Sixteen portions of the massive law, including ones relating to electronic and Internet surveillance, expire Dec. 31. The majority will stay in effect unless repealed.

The looming deadline, and votes expected in the Senate and House of Representatives this week, has prompted a frenzied round of political jockeying. With the aid of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, Republicans claim an expansion of the law--in the form of a 219-page "conference report" (click for PDF)--is necessary to fight terrorists.

But Democrats and a handful of Republicans, wary of the proposed additions to the Patriot Act and what they view as an unseemly haste to rush them into law, introduced a bill Monday calling for a temporary, three-month renewal.

The conference report does increase the amount of summary statistics that federal courts and prosecutors must provide to Congress each year, an oversight feature that Republicans have been stressing. It also includes unrelated sections such as support for mandatory drug testing, cigarette taxes and methamphetamine restrictions.

The report "retains the tools essential to law enforcement in fighting international terrorism while significantly expanding protections for civil rights from the act currently in force," Sen. Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican, said in a statement released this weekend.

Supporting a three-month extension is a fluid coalition of senators including Leahy and fellow Democrats Richard Durbin of Illinois, Carl Levin of Michigan, Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, John Rockefeller of West Virginia, Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, and Kenneth Salazar of Colorado. The trio of Republicans are Sununu, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Larry Craig of Idaho.

[deylat2]

For Shame:The games Congress plays!

No law shouldever be passed in a rush: Seriousflaws alwaysemerge late. When unrelated legislation is attached( a dirty political trick, the shouldbe a 5 year waiting period before broughtto a vote andthecommittee thatproposed it censored, disbanded and itsmembers barred for life from participation in any congressional committee

[Pluqueric]

Temporary extension?

When does something of this nature ever manage to be temporary?

It is time for the Administration to abandon its insatiable grab for ever-increasing power at the expense of those rights we Americans hold sacred and dear. That we are fighting a war on Terrorism is duly noted; but at no time in our history, during ANY war, has the American people been asked to surrender so many of its hard-earned personal freedoms all in the name of Country.

This great republic exists today ONLY because the founding fathers insisted that certain inalienable rights be specifically enunciated and incorporated into the Constitution. Without those rights and freedoms, there would not have been enough ratifying States to form this great experiment in Democracy. Yet, year after year, sometimes imperceptibly, and sometimes blatantly, those rights are eroded by the very people who swear solemn oaths to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution. Every time I hear a politician swear that oath, I feel that his first act of Office is Perjury  treasonous perjury! He swears that oath knowing full well he intends to do his best to dismantle what little is left of the Bill of Rights.

Those very freedoms form the foundation of our countrys greatness. We need not fear that any enemy will gain an advantage over us simply because we enjoy certain rights. We need not deprive anyone (not even the enemies within our gates) those God-given and man-insisted-upon rights! Every day, with rare exception, we read about the abuses of government agencies acting under the broad powers and lack of oversight given to them by a subservient Congress which should be protecting this countrys citizens, not cowardly selling them out for fear that someone might call them soft on this or that.

As far as the Administration giving its assurances of oversight and promises not to abuse the powers granted, one needs merely to read the record. The Administration rarely ever meets a Congressional deadline for reporting the results of accountability measures, and when asked by Congress to supply certain data, invariably refuses to comply, citing National Security. It is so easy for the DoJ to make promises of unqualified compliance, because they know that later, they can renege on ANYTHING by simply hiding behind the phrase: That cannot be divulged since it would violate National Security.

And how do we KNOW that National Security would be compromised if that information were released? We dont. How can we find out? We cant. But dont they have to tell a judge? NO! All they have to say to a judge is the same thing they say to Congress: they simply allege that a matter of National Security is at stake, and the judge has no rights beyond that.

Who is kidding who? Its a one-sided deal, where the American people lose. Yet the men and women who should be defending and protecting us, do no more than make loud noises, then sit back and vote against us.

The amazing thing is that this country has survived, until now, without the necessity of a Patriots Act. Some of the flimsiest, weakest, and downright impotent arguments put forth in defense of the governments request for the powers to abrogate our rights and freedoms suggest that this time it is different because the enemy is secretive and hidden.

Wake up, America! Our enemies have always put on two fronts: the public face of a belligerent calling or our defeat and the hidden, faceless mask of the covert spy. Without surrendering our rights and our precious freedoms, we have always gained the inevitable triumph  not in spite of those freedoms, but because of them! They are what make us great! Our enemies know that! They joyfully watch us do a hatchet job on the ideas and principles upon which this country was founded.

THAT is what we need to fear! The founding fathers warned us of that. No where in the Constitution does it say that Congress shall pass no law abridging those rights Except in time of War or Unless it looks like it might be better in the long run, or Until it gets the chance to go back over those hastily enacted suspensions of our rights and can review them to make sure they are no longer needed.

What bothers me most, more than the Administration asking for (brow-beating and harassing our representatives for) dictatorial powers to suspend the Constitution, or Congress actually giving in like shallow-minded Frat pledges who want to be seen as good citizens doing their duty; more than that, I am bothered by the Supreme Court of the United States having actually upheld these obviously unconstitutional laws.

The Supreme Court! The last resort of a free people to remain free, the ultimate check in the time honored Checks and Balances scheme of our Glorious Country. The justices of the Supreme Court are not hysterical, empty-headed, shallow-minded men and women prone to herd mentality. If the learned, intelligent, thoughtful, deliberative justices of our Supreme Court can not see the transparent abuses inherent in the so-called Patriots Act, we are, indeed, doomed as a free nation.

Congress must not allow things to get that far out of hand! The only precedent ever set for wartime suppresion of rights has been the suspension of Habeas Corpus, and history has shown that it serves no valid or good purpose. The use of concentration camps in World War II is one of this magnificent nation's greatest shames!

Men who are willing to surrender some freedoms for same safety deserve neither. That has been said and repeated by many of this country's greatest men. Let all men know,e verywhere, that we do not fear them enugh to cowardly sweep our rights and freedoms under the carpet. We are a great and proud people. We are a nation based on law and we honor and respect the rights of men everywhere.

We will not be bullied into imposing a Police State, which we fought against in several serious and costly wars. We shall win, because we are a nation of freedoms, where each individual matters and is important to the overall good. We shall not compromise our principles out of fear that they might somehow trip us up!

We are a noble people who are not afraid to extend to the rest of the world the rights and freedoms we enjoy and jealously guard. No enemy can take this away from us, unless we first take it away from ourselves.

God Bless America; we need Your blessings now more than ever.