Reply With Quoteum...should we all say "yay" now?
Senate Rejects Extension of Patriot Act
WASHINGTON - In a stinging defeat for President Bush, Senate Democrats blocked passage Friday of a new Patriot Act to combat terrorism at home, depicting the measure as a threat to the constitutional liberties of innocent Americans.
Republicans spurned calls for a short-term measure to prevent the year-end expiration of law enforcement powers first enacted in the anxious days after Sept. 11, 2001. "The president will not sign such an extension," said Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., and lawmakers on each side of the issue blamed the other for congressional gridlock on the issue.
The Senate voted 52-47 to advance a House-passed bill to a final vote, eight short of the 60 needed to overcome the filibuster backed by nearly all Senate Democrats and a handful of the 55 Republicans.
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um...should we all say "yay" now?
Good thing too, last report I seen, the changes to the actual Patriot Act was miniscule compare to dozens of senators' pet projects cram into it.
Rah rah. Threat to consitutional liberties? Is it bigger than the threat to life of American citizens?
I tell yah mayor, you need to close the beaches. There’s a man eating shark out there!
Now sheriff, calm down. You’ve got to get realistic. It’s almost summer when tourist season will begin…
I was actually a big proponent of the Patriot Act before I started getting into the finer points of it in one of my Law classes. The thing is simply scary, very scary. It flew thru appropriations, which is there to analyze and break it down, in record time. They need to go back to the drawing board and come up with something else. This bill should be renamed the Pandoras Box Bill.
It's more than likely that those in teh know - say Congress and the Senate for example - are aware that the patriot act has done been little help over and above existing security-based legislation to curb terror and a lot to curb rights and throw pork to various special interests.Originally Posted by etlamatey
Is there any study that proves the act has actually done much to save lives?
"Live Free Or Die"
I think that sums it up.
Some things that really irk me is when they can arrest people in USA and detain them as POWs because "When the terrorists attacked USA, it turned it into a warzone". That is just such a cheap and dishonest work around the law and around habeas corpus.
Changing the f***ing name would be a good start to moving forward with new legislation. Insult to our Constitution that it is passed under such a title (of course that was the least of the insults).
I'd also like to add that even if the law was some how, "OK" in my eyes, I would have still have been pissed about the lawmakers since almost none of them actually read the document before signing it. Not even a summary brief done by interns or council. Those guys signed this without reading it.
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