The Senate on Thursday gave its blessing to the renewal of the USA Patriot Act after adding new privacy protections designed to strike a better balance between civil liberties and the government's power to root out terrorists.
The 89-10 vote marked a bright spot in President Bush's troubled second term as his approval ratings dipped over the war in Iraq and his administration's response to Hurricane Katrina. Renewing the act, Bush and congressional Republicans said, was key to preventing more terror attacks in the United States.
Bush applauded the Senate for overcoming "partisan attempts to block its passage." The House was expected to approve the two-bill package next week and send it to the president, who would sign it before 16 provisions expire March 10.
Nice. Always the same old Bush--he just has to show us how he doesn't give a shit about reality or how things look. So, anyone trying to block the Patriot Act is strictly partisan. There's absolutely NOTHING wrong with the Patriot Act--it is a PERFECT PIECE OF LEGISLATION HANDED DOWN BY GOD AND IS UNTOUCHABLE AND UNIMPROVABLE BY THE HUMAN PEN.
Which is probably exactly what that religious [http://www.webster.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?sourceid=Mozilla-search&va=zealot|zealot] thinks.
What really gets me is that through the entire run of the 40 year Cold War we never needed something like the Patriot Act.
When our enemy was the Evil Empire--a country with enough nukes to destroy the entire world just by themselves--we didn't need to have a document that even hinted at taking away our civil rights.
Now, we are facing down a group of terrorists who number in the thousands who don't have a single nuke who combined kill maybe a few thousand people a year, and we need this new law to guarantee our security.
But what about the changes made to protect our privacy rights?
The above linked article goes on to describe in vague terms what those changes are:
"This bill will allow our law enforcement officials to continue to use the same tools against terrorists that are already used against drug dealers and other criminals, while safeguarding the civil liberties of the American people," Bush said in a statement from India.
Critics held their ground. A December filibuster led by Sen. Russell Feingold, D-Wis., and joined by several libertarian-leaning Republicans, forced the Bush administration to agree to modest new curbs on the government's power to probe library, bank and other records.
Feingold insisted those new protections are cosmetic.
"Americans want to defeat terrorism and they want the basic character of this country to survive and prosper," he said. "They want both security and liberty, and unless we give them both and we can if we try we have failed."
Some lawmakers who voted for the package acknowledged deep reservations about the power it would grant to any president.
"Our support for the Patriot Act does not mean a blank check for the president," said Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada, who voted to pass the bill package. "What we tried to do on a bipartisan basis is have a better bill. It has been improved."
Like Bush cares what any of this says. He'll just break the law anyway. Then he have his lacky, who happen to be the head cop of the country, Alberto Gonzales, excuse away everything or say that it's top secret and he can't talk about it. Then, the Republican government will NOT investigate because that would endanger the secrecy of this important program--just like they did with Bush's Spygate/wiretapping program.
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