ACLU Drops Challenge Over Patriot Act

An anonymous reader writes, "The ACLU announced on Friday that they were dropping their case against the US Government over the highly contested section 215 of the Patriot Act. ACLU Associate Legal Director Ann Beeson stated: 'While the reauthorized Patriot Act is far from perfect, we succeeded in stemming the damage from some of the Bush administration's most reckless policies. The ACLU will continue to monitor how the government applies the broad Section 215 power and we will challenge unconstitutional demands on a case-by-case basis.'"

Patriot Pieties

[Anonymous Coward]

One of the most amazing and amazingly unremarked upon aspects of these 9/11 commission hearings is the unanimity about the benefits of the Patriot Act. They don't often say it outright and the Democrats especially talk about how important "increased cooperation" between the CIA and FBI is. But the reality is that all of these "needed fixes" everyone keeps talking about are the Patriot Act. All of the "institutional barriers" that prevented us from "shaking the tree," all of the obvious things that should have been "checked out" etc are what the Patriot Act was designed to fix. It may not be perfect but I think it's hilarious that this seems to be the one bit of policy consensus from these hearings but few are willing to admit it.

Re:it's about the lawyers

[Peyna]

Isn't it possible that the ACLU's arguments were just bunk and the lawyers decided it was better to cut and run?

Or they see some change happening in Congress in the near future and decided that might be a better way to fix the problem.

Wouldn't it be funny if

[pair-a-noyd]

a story about "The Patriot Act" appeared on /. and nobody commented on it because they were afraid to?

Re:I know why they did it

[pboulang]

Well, the NRA, which doesn't care about any other amendment, seems to fill in that gap rather nicely.

or would you prefer the ACLU and not the NRA fought 2nd amendment issues?

Re:Wouldn't it be funny if

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll tell you what's funny. I'm an amateur movie maker.

I'm self-censoring because I'm afraid of the government.

Proud of it? No. Just realistic about the fact that they have more guns and bad attitude thugs than I do.

This is a chilling effect. Now excuse me while I sing the star spangled banner for a while.