Patriot Act Renewed

The House of Representatives reauthorized the Patriot Act yesterday by a margin of 257 to 171, with 44 Dems supporting it and 14 Republicans opposing it. I feel guilty that I didn’t pay enough attention to this issue leading up to the vote, but it looks like even if the blogosphere’s best efforts had managed all of the turncoat 44 Dems to oppose it, it still would have passed. We would have needed to convince 43 Republicans to oppose it, too, which seems like an impossible task, considering the tone of the debate in the House. (My math was stinky. Nevermind.)

Republicans repeatedly argued throughout the 11-hour debate that the latest explosions in London showed how urgent and important it was to renew the law.

"Passage of the ... act is vital to maintaining the post-9/11 law enforcement and intelligence reforms that have reduced America's vulnerability to terrorist attack," Wisconsin Republican James Sensenbrenner told lawmakers.

Republicans also added a new provision to apply the federal death penalty for terrorist offenses that resulted in death and another establishing a new crime of narco-terrorism to punish people using drug profits to aid terrorism. These offenders will now face 20-year minimum prison sentences.

[...]

The Senate judiciary committee voted unanimously to recommend its own version of the act on Thursday, which included only four-year renewals of these two clauses. The full Senate is expected to take its bill up in the fall.

The House also passed an amendment requiring the director of the FBI to personally approve all requests for library or bookstore records and a number of other amendments designed to add civil liberty safeguards to the bill.

[…]

Leading opposition from the left, the American Civil Liberties Union said the bill gave the FBI extraordinary power to obtain personal records, search individuals' homes or offices without their knowledge and to use a secret court to obtain personal date on ordinary Americans.

In response, Dems on the House Judiciary Committee have prepared a 70-page dissent opposing the reauthorization.

Unlike some Democratic opposition, those decrying the Patriot Act include a diverse panoply of voices: 389 communities and seven states have passed resolutions opposing parts of the PATRIOT Act, representing over 62 million people, they note.

Raw Story’s got more.

The Patriot Act, I’m afraid, is a losing battle while both the House and Senate are controlled by the GOP. Our best plan for getting rid of this and other associated encroachments on our civil liberties is to keep pushing on the criminal activities of the current occupants of the White House and work our tails off to bring in new leadership who believes that there’s more to fighting terrorism than restricting civil liberties, preemptive strikes, and mistreating detainees—things instead like developing a comprehensive alternative energy plan and creating a strategy to implement comprehensive public transportation for Americans, even those who don’t live in cities.

Instead, major oil companies are posting record profits and “enjoying one of the biggest windfalls in [the oil industry’s] history.” Isn’t that amazing?