It’s a sad day for liberty and freedom. The House voted last night to extend or make permanent the most controversial provisions of the Patriot Act. House Republicans mentioned the recent London attacks as evidence that the act is necessary.

In a classic case of doublespeak, Representative Sensenbrenner (R-Wis) said:

“The Patriot Act has proven itself over the past three and a half years as an invaluable tool against terrorists while remaining true to our strong civil liberty protections.”

Funny. Has the Patriot Act helped at all in capturing terrorists? From what I can find, there have only been 39 terrorism related arrests due to the Patriot Act, and most of those were for crimes such as passport violations, fraud, false statements, and conspiracy.

Can you believe the nerve of this guy to actually imply that this legislation offers civil liberty protections?? Maybe someone should tell him that the Patriot Act actually allows law enforcement to demand the production of financial records, credit reports, telephone, internet, and other communications or transactional records — all without a true warrant.

The good news is that, so far, it looks like the Senate is headed towards a much better version of the bill. This version actually requires that you be notified within 7 days if you were subject to a secret search, and tightens some other requirements. Let’s hope the final bill is closer to the Senate version.