Senate Passes Patriot Act Renewal

IAmTheDave writes "The Senate has passed a renewal of the Patriot act, 89-10, after two extensions caused by months of negotiations. The only thing standing in the way of a full renewal is a House vote, expected to pass next week. The renewal comes with some privacy protections attached, however, some worry they are only cosmetic. 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. Certain lawmakers supported passing the bill even though they were still wary about it - Arlen Specter urged his colleagues to pass it even as he promised to introduce a new measure and hold hearings on how to fix it. Terrorism aside, the bill also includes new legislation that has almost nothing to do with terrorism, like one measure, which would make it harder for illicit labs to obtain ingredients for methamphetamine by requiring pharmacies to sell nonprescription cold medicines only from behind the counter. I know that people like Arlen Specter promise further hearings - but why pass what you know is flawed?"

According to a recent study

[dereference]

I doubt 10% of Americans understand the Constitution in any depth. This is why our elected officials can take away our freedoms and usurp power.

Sadly, it's more like 0.1% [usatoday.com] (although most citizens seem to be pretty familiar with the Simpsons).

Vote Out Incumbents

[Kurt Russell]

Damn them all. How 'bout this shit! [democracynow.org]

Re:Why pass what you know is flawed? I'll tell you

[VP]

The US government failed to do that on 9/11.
BS. The US government showed incompetence, from the top on down. How easy everyone forgets the information that was available to the government before 9/11:
There were clear signs that Osama Bin Laden was planning an attack in the US, including a presidential briefing [cnn.com].
The above briefing discusses the failed "millenium plot" which was successfully prevented, which was linked to Bin Laden, and which showed the terrorist's interest in airplanes.
The FBI office in Phoenix, AZ received a memo regarding Bin Laden supporters [cbsnews.com] taking flying lessons [cnn.com].
A month later, the FBI actually arrested Moussaoui in Minnesota, but didn't find it necessary to search his computer [cnn.com].

All of this was accomplished without the PATRIOT Act, and nothing in the PATRIOT Act would have made a difference if the same mistakes were made.

Also, the attacks in Madrid and London happened while the Patriot Act was in full force (and the illegal wiretapping was already going on). How come they were not prevented?

This is not a crime-enforcing bill, it is a counter-terrorism bill.
Keep lying to yourself, hopefully one day you will wake up...

Re:Why Pass It?

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you mean this [shns.com]?

The 10 senators who voted against it...

[perrygeo]

Check out the senate roll call [senate.gov] [www.senate.gov] for the vote breakdown. Here's the only 10 senators with enough guts to stand up for america's civil liberties: Akaka (D-HI) Bingaman (D-NM) Byrd (D-WV) Feingold (D-WI) Harkin (D-IA) Jeffords (I-VT) Leahy (D-VT) Levin (D-MI) Murray (D-WA) Wyden (D-OR) I realize some other senators were trying to compromise and we don't live in a perfect society and blah blah blah. But this was just too important of a vote to play political games. If you're against the Patriot Act, these 10 people are the only incumbents who deserve your vote this November!

Re:Pain in the ass

[AWeishaupt]

That's just stupid - it's an important pharmaceutical, and i can't think of many other common theraputic drugs that are available OTC that have the limited side effects, that can fill the niche filled by psuedoephedrine. It's already listed as a Table 1 Precursor by the UN. As was already established by a previous poster, most large scale methamphetamine and methcathinone production is based around pure psuedoephedrine, which is either stolen or imported - fiddling with 1000 packs of Sudafed isn't worth it. Banning or restricting OTC chemicals used for the synthesis of illicit drugs, or explosives, is absolutely futile - you can synthesize anything from anything, if you know how. I might know quite well how a Birch reduction works, but i've still got a cold, gorramit!

Re:Guess who the real patriots are.

[Anonymous Coward]

There are 10 true patriots out there

So you know who to vote for in the next election, here's the list of those ten:

NAYs ---10
Akaka (D-HI)
Bingaman (D-NM)
Byrd (D-WV)
Feingold (D-WI)
Harkin (D-IA)
Jeffords (I-VT)
Leahy (D-VT)
Levin (D-MI)
Murray (D-WA)
Wyden (D-OR)

And not voting:
Inouye (D-HI)

The link:
http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_li sts/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=109&session=2& vote=00029 [senate.gov]

let's stop the hysteria

[fortinbras47]

"The ACLU said that most of the voluminous Patriot Act is actually unobjectionable from a civil liberties point of view and added that the law makes important changes that give law enforcement agents the tools they need to protect against terrorist attacks."

------ ACLU press release available here [aclu.org]

I think most people going hysterical actually have not read up on what the Patriot Act does in a SERIOUS and ACADEMIC way. Before passing judgement, I recommend you do.

This site [patriotdebates.com] has a tremendous amount of quality, specific information. And for those too lazy to read, there's some interesting video at c-span at this link: rtsp://cspanrm.fplive.net/cspan/project/ter/ter071 805_discourse.rm Go about 49 minutes in and listen to Stuart Taylor, a fellow at the Brookings Institute (yes, a left of center policy think tank).

Once you start reading with an open mind, I think that most people will find that extending the Patriot Act provisions is quite a good idea, and that maybe this is why it passed in the Senate 89-10.

Re:Funny

[killjoe]

Actually there was very little coverage of the fact that Cheney was out hunting with a woman who was not his wife.

Re:meth

[glesga_kiss]

Do you think the extra hassle for customers has stopped meth labs?

Yes, essentially it did stop them. They used to be large barns/warehouses buying the precursers in in bulk and producing large high quality batches. The addition rate for meth follows the purity of the drug. Once the supply chain was locked down all that was left was the kitchen labs. The usage dropped significantly, especially with the poor quality crap made from crushed cough medicine pills.

Banning the precursor has worked for several drugs, some of which you won't have heard of because of the success. The only reason these cold and flu remedies weren't banned outright is because of the drug industry bribery to politicians.

PBS's Frontline did a good documentary on the topic; worth a look.

Re:let's stop the hysteria

[Boronx]

Nice out-of-context troll:

The ACLU said that most of the voluminous Patriot Act is actually unobjectionable from a civil liberties point of view and added that the law makes important changes that give law enforcement agents the tools they need to protect against terrorist attacks. A few provisions, though, unnecessarily trample civil liberties, and must be revised to bring them in line with the Constitution.

Congress passed the flawed bill, and more than four years later renewed the bill without correcting the flaws, after many opportunities to do so.

They've had their second and third chance to fix this. A cynical observer might conclude that Congress considers these tramplings of civil liberties to be a valuable part of the act.

Re:meth

[spiritraveller]

That Frontline documentary was excellent. After working in a sub-sub-urban Public Defender's office for awhile and seeing that 90% of our cases were somehow related to methamphetamine, I would have to agree that it is definitely worth it.

Drug store pseudoephedrine has become an essential ingredient to make the stuff.

I used to be a total libertarian when it came to drugs. I figured that it should be nobody's business but your own what you put in your body... no more after seeing what meth does.

Re:I for Independent?

[stinerman]

Jeffords was elected as a Republican and then changed his party affiliation to Independent, which enabled the Democrats to be in the majority at that time. Before then he was a RINO (Republican In Name Only) and usually voted with the Democrats on most issues.

Vermont, the state he is from, also has an independent represenative in Bernie Sanders. Sanders is the favorite to win Jeffords's seat when he retires at the end of the year.

Re:I suppose you've read the bill then?

[iamcadaver]

I'll name one: the creation of the Secret Service Uniform Division

We have a new police force, this for the homeland security department. They have the power to arrest and detain anyone seen as a threat to the United States of America. That's an awfull lot of power, don't you think?

Scanning the comments, and seeing READ THE BILL, I thought you were propping the Read The Bills Act. Might be the only thing to slow down this avalanche of legislature. Unlike other proposed bills, this one means just what the title says: Every bill must be read, out loud, and every congressional voter must sign her name that she has read or heard every word of it.

The lobby behind this last ditch effort to stop the toboggan-to-hell is http://downsizedc.org/ [downsizedc.org]. Give them a minute of your eyeballs, and maybe everyone's blood pressure will come down around here.

Re:meth

[coopex]

Heh, you're an idiot if you think that pseudoephedrine is the easiest/best/ONLY route to large scale quality meth. It's much cheaper and safer to create something like 1-phenyl-2-propanone and then reductively aminate it in bulk, as opposed to using the Birch reaction on ephedrine. Banning precursors does nothing. You can still buy LSD, which has some of the most complex precursors and is probably the most demanding synthesis of illegal drugs.

Re:Not Flawed Legislation

[Yunzil]

Show me the evidence that the government has been spying on US citizens and not on foreign terrorists? Got any?

No?

Gee, I wonder why.

Have you missed all the flak about domestic spying recently?

Anyway, it's very difficult to get information about a secret spy program when it's, you know, secret.

If all these "freedoms" Liberals crow about were so important to the Founding Fathers, why were they in a Amendments to the Constitution instead of in the Constitution itself?

Thomas Jefferson (at least) thought the Constitution was good except for two things: no bill of rights and the lack of a term limit for the President. The Bill of Rights was added in 1791.

Re:Not Flawed Legislation

[Damvan]

Russia never occupied Iran. We gave those weapons to Iraq during the Iran/Iraq war. The whole "Enemy of my enemy is my friend" kind of thing. Iran was our enemy, Iraq was Iran's enemy, so Iraq is our friend.