OC Register: Bush's Patriot Act setback a win for us

[question everything]

Tuesday, December 27, 2005

Bush's Patriot Act setback a win for us

Editorial: Congress' refusal to be a rubber stamp sets stage for a debate on balancing liberty and security.


Although it was in some ways a tribute to Congress' bumbling ways, the outcome for the USA Patriot Act - an extension for only five weeks, until Feb. 5 - was an unalloyed defeat for the Bush administration. The president had repeatedly said he would not accept a "short-term extension," but in the end he was forced to yield to congressional doubts about certain provisions of the act, with the White House even intervening with House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner to get him to agree to the short extension the Senate preferred.

The refusal to rubber-stamp the controversial Patriot Act was a victory for the American people. It suggests that finally, four-plus years after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, Americans have impressed on their legislators the idea that they are not willing to accept any and all expansions of government power that some official can dream up in the name of a safety that can never be 100 percent guaranteed.

It is useful to remember that the original Patriot Act, passed within weeks of the 9/11 attacks, was not a tailored response to the specific terrorist threats we face - about which U.S. intelligence agencies, obviously knew very little - but a pastiche of off-the-shelf measures to extend government power, many of which had been proposed by the Clinton administration but rejected by the Republican Congress.

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So the idea that failure to renew the entire Patriot Act in all its confusing glory will set the stage for a terrorist attack is a scare tactic, plain and simple.

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http://www.ocregister.com/ocregister/opinion/abox/article_916600.php