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.
You know, the House has always been more knee-jerk (emphasis on the “jerk”) than the Senate, but I’m not sure I like either side of the Congress contemplating anything about PATRIOT other than whether to accelerate the sunset clauses.
Notification within 7 days that you were subject to a secret search? While I agree it’s better than never knowing, it’s still not acceptable - there should be NO SECRET SEARCHES. Period. End of story.
Let’s hope the final bill is closer to nothing than anything it is right now.
Comment by Jon — July 25, 2005 @ 8:36 pm
Granted, I am choosing the lesser of two evils by cheering for the Senate version of the bill, which requires notification if you’ve been searched, over the House version which makes the current version permanent.
My preference would, of course, be to repeal the entire PATRIOT Act. Unfortunately, I don’t see that becoming one of my choices anytime soon
Comment by Danny — July 26, 2005 @ 8:11 pm
I remember a time when a sexual predator was called a playboy. Yeah, if somebody calls you a sexual predator thank them for comparing you to Hugh Hefner, the greatest sexual predator of all time. Be proud of who you are, don´t challange people on your sexual desires, agree with the sexual predator, sex offender label, your ranks grow bigger every day and your close loving family members are a voting block. Ya feelin me? It´s time to start standing the political and media monsters down. Those who demonise are going to have a better excuse than the usual “it´s sick” or the usual, couching sex offenders with murderers, it just dosent work any more. Dick Morris saved Bill Clinton presidentcy in the mid 90`s when Clinton populaity numbers were dismal. A naive america bought all of Dick Morris´s bullscrap. Thats right, we always had child protection in this country, however Morris and Clinton made child protection dangerous for children by politically overprotecting children. How? Well by creating unnecessary fear through their friends in newspapers i.e. the Washington Post, New York Times, and many other friendy newspapers once the other newspapers around the country seen how stories about children and adults having sex and or sexual friendships were big money makers other papers, radio and television stations jumped on the band wagon and printed unecessary fear enducing stories of course force excluded, that is and should be a crime a terrible crime or if the victim is 11 or under for males, that to can be considered rape or under 16 for females again rape.) That aside the whole sex offender, chid molester, sex offender media feeding frenzy WAS simply a media money making, political number jumping sham. No longer. Its getting old and it not only doesn`t politically work anymore but it works against polititions today. You never fight todays battles with yesterdays tactics, Its time we socially moved on. Today we have come to the point where we are making it more dangerous for our children not less. The perpetrater will see the degree of punishment that he or she may recieve then decide to do something horrible like eliminate the evidence. God forbid, he or she will say, hey the punishment is the same or even less for murder so what the hell. Smarten up society, stop creating a dangerous society for our children. This isn’t an opinion, it is a fact, the proof is we have never had the murder of so many children than we have had since the punishment has been made so severe and humiliating (Meagans Law et. al.)just read the papers and watch t.v. and listen to the radio my proof will be right there. The tougher we get on sex offenders the tougher they will get on our children. I want my children to have a future not a tomb stone. Repeal Meagans Law, and stop allowing television shows and the media to profit by creating fear in your families, we became the greatest nation on earth without this nonsence. Enough is enough!!
Comment by jane perkins — January 8, 2006 @ 8:55 pm