United Liberty

A day after the the Senate passed (by a voice vote, no recorded vote was taken) renewal of provisions of the PATRIOT Act that were set to expire on Sunday, the House followed suite by passing the Bill of Rights gutting legislation by a vote of 315 to 97:

Many liberals in the House opposed the controversial act, saying it tramps Constitutional protections and civil liberties.

Congress adopted the Patriot Act shortly after September 11th.

Many lawmakers wanted to rewrite or even kill some of the most controversial provisions in the act. But Congressional leaders didn’t have the appetite for a major battle with the economy and health care reform swinging in the balance.

Many of the renewed provisions involve wiretaps and eavesdropping measures.

The Senate ok’d  the package earlier this week. President Obama is expected to sign the bill into law.

Just to make sure I’m reading this right, Democrats are too busy other assaults on individual liberty, free markets, the Constitution and loading up debt on the next generation by trying to pass ObamaCare and endless “stimulus” bills to put up a fight on civil liberties that they claim to be defenders of. Right? Got it.

Please, don’t let our liberties stand in the way of your agenda.

The so-called HIRE Act, the “jobs” bill being pushed by Democrats in Congress, is being loaded up with all kinds of special interest breaks, including delaying scheduled cuts to Medicare payouts to doctors:

Senate Democrats circulated a jobs bill Tuesday that’s light on new initiatives on boosting hiring and heavy with provisions sought by lobbyists for business groups, doctors and the satellite broadcasting industry.

Senate Democrats were working to round up Republican support, but more snow in the nation’s capital made it unlikely the Senate could pass it this week and hand President Barack Obama a quick, badly needed political victory. Republicans are willing partners because much of the bill is made up of tax breaks they support, though many GOP senators said they were still waiting to see the details.

The 362-page measure is still in draft form and has not been officially released. The draft has very few new ideas for creating jobs, other than a $10 billion plan to exempt companies from paying the employer’s share of Social Security payroll taxes for new hires if they are unemployed and hired this year.

Didn’t we learn with the “stimulus” bill that throwing money at a problem doesn’t work? The delaying of cuts to Medicare is an example of why talk of savings in ObamaCare is a lie. Congress will never cut those payouts, they have been delaying them for years.

It should come as no surprise that the FBI illegally collected phone records, breaking their own rules to protect civil liberties in the process:

The FBI illegally collected more than 2,000 U.S. telephone call records between 2002 and 2006 by invoking terrorism emergencies that did not exist or simply persuading phone companies to provide records, according to internal bureau memos and interviews. FBI officials issued approvals after the fact to justify their actions

E-mails obtained by The Washington Post detail how counterterrorism officials inside FBI headquarters did not follow their own procedures that were put in place to protect civil liberties. The stream of urgent requests for phone records also overwhelmed the FBI communications analysis unit with work that ultimately was not connected to imminent threats.

When government agencies are given the ability to take actions that may have an impact on civil liberties, they tend to overstep their boundaries. The abuse of the USA PATRIOT Act immediately comes to mind. According to a Washington Post report in June 2007, there were over 1,000 instances of abuse where the FBI collected information through domestic phone calls, e-mails and financial transactions using the PATRIOT Act. The bad news is that this was only a 10 percent sample, meaning there was more abuse to be found.

Julian Sanchez of the Cato Institute and Jena Baker McNeill of the Heritage Foundation recently contributed a point/counterpoint on the USA PATRIOT Act for the Los Angeles Times.

McNeill writes:

The Patriot Act has helped law enforcement officials apprehend hundreds of suspects, and it isn’t just one provision of the act that has proved useful. For instance, the surveillance provision was used successfully in the Portland Seven investigation, which may well have prevented an attack on synagogues and Jewish schools. And while new information is still coming to light about the three recent alleged plots, it is very likely that Patriot Act provisions played major roles stopping at least one of the plans.

Perhaps to the shock of some, the Obama administration has been cool to the idea of repealing the Patriot Act. It may even support keeping key provisions intact. The likely cause of this support: The law works. It’s tough to argue with results, especially when American lives are at stake.

There are many misconceptions about what the act actually does. Simply put, it modernizes existing law enforcement tools and practices that existed before the act was passed in 2001. It makes it more difficult for terrorists to stay a step ahead of the law by switching cellphone or e-mail accounts. Its provisions free investigators to stop plots in their earliest stages, decreasing the likelihood that a plan would mature and become unstoppable. It also outlines methods for handling intelligence and investigations in areas the law did not adequately provide for, such as in cyberspace and cellphone communications.

Sanchez responds:

Judge Andrew Napolitano, host of Freedom Watch, explains natural rights and why the USA PATRIOT Act violates our natural right to privacy (video is in three parts):

The Obama Administration is backing an extention of expiring provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act:

The Obama administration supports extending three key provisions of the Patriot Act that are due to expire at the end of the year, the Justice Department told Congress in a letter made public Tuesday.

Lawmakers and civil rights groups had been pressing the Democratic administration to say whether it wants to preserve the post-Sept. 11 law’s authority to access business records, as well as monitor so-called “lone wolf” terrorists and conduct roving wiretaps.

The provision on business records was long criticized by rights groups as giving the government access to citizens’ library records, and a coalition of liberal and conservative groups complained that the Patriot Act gives the government too much authority to snoop into Americans’ private lives.

As a presidential candidate, Barack Obama said he would take a close look at the law, based on his past expertise in constitutional law. Back in May, President Obama said legal institutions must be updated to deal with the threat of terrorism, but in a way that preserves the rule of law and accountability.

As the folks at Anti-War.com* note that none of the provisions that the administration wants extended require a warrant or even probable cause, which clearly violates the Fourth Amendment.