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Congress to Revisit the Patriot Act
BlakeCaldwell writes "CNet is reporting that both the House and Senate are planning to review the 16 portions of the Patriot Act that are set to expire at the end of the year, several dealing with computer and Internet surveillance. They're trying to avoid the criticism they received after rushing this bill through in 2001 by holding hearings to review the bill's worth. FTA: 'One hearing disclosed police invoked the Patriot Act 108 times in a 22-month period when surreptitiously entering and searching a home or office without notifying the owner.'"
The following provisions of the USA Patriot Act will expire on Jan. 1, 2006 if not renewed by Congress:
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~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
"Sunset Clauses" are common practice when making law. I think it would have been a bigger suprise if there wasn't one on a law change of this magnitude.
"False hope is why we'll never run out of natural resources!" - Lewis Black
That would be believable had they not JUST DONE THE EXACT SAME THING with the REAL ID act!
BTW - Who was the 1 who voted against the Patriot Act?
The USA PATRIOT Act is merely the USA Act and a money-capturing act. The USA Act is a slight upgrade to the FISA. It does not eliminate the FISA. The USA PATRIOT Act does not eliminate the USA Act. So, when parts of the USA PATRIOT Act expire, do they retroactively expire in the USA Act and then on the FISA? The article doesn't mention any of this at all. It just reinforces the common myth that the USA PATRIOT Act is an original set of provisions instead of the easy to discover fact (visit the Congress' website) that it is a conglomeration of provisions that have been around since 1978.
The previous comment is purposely vague and generalized, but all of the facts are completely true.
Actually, the way to "recind" an established law is to make a new law stating that the old one "is hereby repealed" (Acts of congress are rife with this expression -- searching on THOMAS gave 50 hits from the current session alone). A simple majority suffices to enact the new law, just like it did the original one.
Even without super-majority requirements, enacting laws is still a non-trivial task. Formally Congress is always free to repeal old laws, of course. However, in practice a law with a sunset provision is much more limited than one without. The point is that they must debate the usefulness of the law come the sunset point if they want to keep it in the books.
BTW - Who was the 1 who voted against the Patriot Act?
Sen. Russ Feingold, D-WI.
And he constantly gets reelected year after year. He is the only person out of 600+ that has the backbone to stand up for our rights. Sadly, he is one out of the many who care about our freedoms and preserving them.
Russ Feingold is a he. And he was the lone senator who voted against it in 2001.
The problem with sunset clauses was recently discovered in california, where a law requiring a major portion of punitive damage awards be given to the state rather than to the individual (which makes sense since the entire point of punitive damages is the slap on the wrist, the plantiff is awarded for their own suffering or whatever through another type of damages). This law was given a multi-year sunset clause (where it automatically falls from force after a few years). The laywers picked up on this, and just held off on bringing any cases to court where punitive damages would be awarded.
While it's true that the law could just be renewed, it gives all the lobby groups a second chance at getting their own special needs taken care of, or having the bill become the parent for an un-attractive rider that ends up killing the whole thing.
paul reinheimer
Well, hey, it worked for my senator...
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Senator Feingold (D-WI, for those to lazy to follow the link) was the only senator to vote against the PATRIOT Act. He took some heat for this, yes, but eventually even many republicans who dislike Feingold's fiscal ideas decided to vote for him. Winning a senate seat by 11 points is no small feat, especially in a "battleground" state.
My point? Not everyone is spineless. Yes, Feingold did, apparently, vote for the Iraqi spending bill with the Real-ID stuff, but next time he has a townhall meeting I'll ask him about it.
Which brings me to another point. Small groups of people CAN get heard. For instance: http://politics.slashdot.org/politics/04/12/06/23
Have you even emailed your senator?
You are so wrong.
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/ a/2004/07/09/MNGQC7IV231.DTL
Terrorism happened mere months after Clinton was elected. In the same place!
It has been shown that the Patriot Act was a wish list from Ashcrofts Justice Department, that was pushed shortly after 9/11 when the nation was still fearfull.
Some Congressmen logged complaints about having to vote on a bill that was printed the same morning as the vote. http://groups-beta.google.com/group/gov.us.fed.co
As a point of fact the bill presented to the House that morning was not even the same bill that was discussed and passed earlier by the Judicary committee. Instead of mounting criticism on the House leadership, Republicans spun rhetoric and fear.http://www.wired.com/news/conflict/0,2100,47
In 2004 when other parts of the bill were set to expire, the Republicans saw that they may not get the votes that they wanted in time. What did our leaders do? They extended the vote by 23 minutes to give the Republican leadership enough time to strongarm other Republicans who had all ready voted against the renewal to change the vote that was all ready cast. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c
Republicans openly manipulate the system, bending and breaking the rules as they see fit. You may call it politics, I call it criminal.
Stop giving them the benefit of the doubt. There are no excuses for their actions. All of them were placed into office with the expectation that they would not put their heads up their collective butts in case of a national emergency.
I could compare it to the rise of the Nazi party in the 30's by playing on the fear of the citizens, instead I will leave that exercise up to you.
Correct. There is only one page on the ACLU's site that addresses the subject. It is always buried in an archive or footnoted in an FAQ, rather than linked from the "Issues" list on the main page.
For the record, the page is currently here. If history is any guide, this is subject to change without notice as soon as they notice people linking to it and turning down the free Kool-Aid.
There are at least three unconscionable problems with their position on gun control and the Second Amendment in general:
1) It's almost completely undisclosed. Many people join the ACLU under the misapprehension that they defend all of the Bill of Rights. The Founding Fathers of the US thought the subject was important enough to place it second in the Bill of Rights; the least the ACLU can do is mention it on their main page somewhere along with the 20 or so other issues they're concerned with.
2) It cites a (ridiculously-flawed, regardless of your position on gun control) Supreme Court decision as indisputable canon. Nowhere else in the Bill of Rights are rights reserved to the government, and nowhere else in the ACLU's history do they give as much credence to a court ruling that suggests otherwise.
3) It's lame. If self-defense isn't a basic civil right, what the hell is?
Only you aren't really thinking about how we deal with murder. We don't try to make it difficult, because we know we can't. Police do *nothing* to try to stop a man from stabbing his wife in anger in the kitchen. There's nothing to be done.
The terrorist acts we're trying to make difficult are stupid. It's like trying to make it difficult to steal the Statue of Liberty. Hey, guess what... that's already very difficult! And people will steal candy bars. Preventing large crimes does not give any safety from small crimes, and the large crimes are rare anyway.
If there were really all that many terrorists, we wouldn't have a hope in hell. They'd make little bombs from simple ingredients and set off one a week, just like in Israel or Ireland. The fact that we have had no serious attacks in the US since 9/11 shows us there just aren't many terrorists around here. So it make a lot more sense to just suck it up when it happens and move on with life then to devote billions to prevention.
The section has already been abused.
When a lawyer is charged with committing a crime by speaking to the media we have a problem....
I'm not saying I agree with her, but come on!
Service guarantees Citizenship! Questions Guarantee GITMO.... Amerika Uber Alles!
A good example is the article here. "One hearing disclosed police invoked the Patriot Act 108 times in a 22-month period" would be a much more useful piece of information if we got a chance to see whether the cases in question did, in fact, involve terrorism.
Actually, the quote is misleading and irrelevant. Sec. 213 "Authority for delaying notice of the execution of a warrant" does not expire. Ever. I've posted this before, but I think it bears repeating...
The US government has been trying to slip this one by us since well before 9/11. It was shot down at least three times in recent history. First it was the Cyberspace Electronic Security Act (CESA). Then the Clinton administration tried to push it through with a meth bill. When that failed, they tried to sneak in through as an amendment to a bankruptcy bill. All the while, the DOJ, led by Reno, was claiming to already have this power without any need for additional legislation in the Nicodemo Scarfo case.
Well, with the PATRIOT ACT, they finally got it. Your only hope now is to have it shot down in the Supreme Court. Both parties have been pushing for this for some time. The People had already spoken. We consistently and emphatically told them 'hell no'. It's clear that Congress has stopped representing the people.
Although you are factually correct in most cases, I'll respectfully have to disagree with your assessment. Given this is my 3rd post on the topic, I'll disclose I'm Canadian and wrote an 3rd year history thesis on this subject. :) I assume you're American and thus we've both be exposed to different historcial interpretations I suspect, neither of which are necessarily wrong.
My take is: Trading within the colonies was a policy of the British Empire, but it was just as much a policy to support Britain while thwarting Prussia, France, and Russia at the same time...it wasn't inherently anti-American (although had that effect). The US economy was not stagnating as you suggest as they could continue to trade w/ France, Spain, Portugal, etc...just not Upper Canada/Nova Scotia, which was a fraction of the US size ALREADY at this time (500,000 Canadians to 6 million Americans).
In addition to 'free trade' I offer the following additional motivations, which have similar if not more weight historically:
- Western expansion: a desire to continue westward expansion at the expense of treaties with Britain and by warfare with Native Americans (who were British Allies).
- 54-40 or fight!: warhawks in US wanting to take advantage of British distraction w/ Napoleon, and a desire to dominate North America. This deliberate, imperialistic urge cannot be ignored historically.
Finally, the Treaty of Ghent was signed before the Battle of Orleans was complete. I see the British loss there to be advantageous to all sides...it helped maintain the status quo and removed any pretense for future British/American hostilities in the future. Worst case scenario would have been Britain taking New Orleans and thus having the US 'surrounded' territorially...the US would have been compelled to act under such circumstances I believe. Long term the US would win a North American conflict I believe, barring Wellington showing up with a seasoned army of 100,000 Napoelonic War-hardened troops. Highly unlikely!
PS American naval successes were largely limited to the Great Lakes, not the Atlantic as you suggest. Britain continued to be the pre-eminent world naval power until the 1870s at the very least. Britain could probably not take the ports of Boston or New York (already heavily fortified in this era), but once outside Britain could dominate if it so desired.
John Maynard Keynes: "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?"
(Apologies for using X as my separator character. Stupid lameness filter!)
I did look at his legislative record. He's not a Libertarian. If he were, he would be fiscally conservative, but socially liberal. He would not support government intrusion into individual liberties in an unconstitutional manner.
Ron Paul is fiscally conservative AND socially conservative (including supporting federal gov't intrusion into your life). That makes him a Republican -- or at least, it makes him what the Republicans USED to be. (They're now fiscally liberal and socially conservative.)
Here are some gems from his record. These are bills he AUTHORED, not just voted "yes" on. I'm not going to build all the links, but this comes from a simple "bill sponsor" search on http://thomas.loc.gov/ -- see for yourself!
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20. H.R.776 : To provide that human life shall be deemed to exist from conception.
Sponsor: Rep Paul, Ron [TX-14] (introduced 2/10/2005)
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A bill to define abortion as murder. No fiscal component at all. Does nothing to encourage small government. It's just social conservatism at the expense of individual rights. Not Libertarian.
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21. H.R.777 : To prohibit any Federal official from expending any Federal funds for any population control or population planning program or any family planning activity.
Sponsor: Rep Paul, Ron [TX-14] (introduced 2/10/2005)
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Fiscally conservative, yes. Also very socially conservative -- not a hallmark of Libertarianism. It outlaws federal funding of ANY family planning activity. What if we want to educate poor people not to have children they can't afford to support? Not permitted under this bill.
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23. H.R.1017 : To prohibit United States voluntary and assessed contributions to the United Nations if the United Nations imposes any tax or fee on any United States person or continues to develop or promote proposals for such a tax or fee.
Sponsor: Rep Paul, Ron [TX-14] (introduced 3/1/2005)
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Abridges individual liberties by PROHIBITING private citizens of the Unites States from giving their OWN money to the U.N. to fund its efforts.
NOT Libertarian.
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24. H.R.1146 : To end membership of the United States in the United Nations.
Sponsor: Rep Paul, Ron [TX-14] (introduced 3/8/2005)
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Socially conservative. Unrelated to smaller government. Directly opposes the Libertarian ideal of a Constitutional government. Conducting international diplomacy (say, via the U.N.) is EXACTLY what the federal government is supposed to do.
Not Libertarian.
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27. H.R.1657 : To ensure financial regulations do not harm economic competitiveness, nor deprive Americans of due process of law, by repealing provisions of Federal law that hold corporate chief executive officers criminally liable for the content and quality of their companies' financial report... [ed. note: Repeals Sarbanes-Oxley]
Sponsor: Rep Paul, Ron [TX-14] (introduced 4/14/2005)
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Again, runs against Libertarian ideals. Regulating interstate trade (including national equity markets) IS what the federal gov't is supposed to be doing.
Removing the requirement that CEOs be responsible for the reports they issue to the public is bad for the free market. A Libertarian would support accuracy and accountability of information supplied to the market.
Not Libertarian.
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28. H.R.1658 : To ensure that the courts interpret the Constitution in the manner that the Framers intended.
Sponsor: Rep Paul, Ron [TX-14] (introduced 4/14/2005)
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Translation: To ensure the courts interpret the Constitution in the manner that *I* want the Framers to have intended.
Sorry, sir. You're a Congressman, not a Jus