Enough of Cheney already! This is really important news; we must act now!

[Talismom]

Congressional leaders of both parties are announcing that
they've now fixed problems with the "USA PATRIOT" act, and are
ready to vote to extend it. But in fact, they've done nothing
but paper over the Act's violations of basic American liberties.
We need to call them on it.

Tell Congress that we still insist that our rights be protected,
and that we can see the current "compromise" is nothing but
putting brave words on a surrender of those rights (more details
below).
You can reach your officials - by calling
the capitol switchboard:

[phone]

After you've made the call, help us track the success of the
campaign by clicking below:

http://www.truemajority.org/call_in.php?call_action=made_call&ga_id=ga_4453602&source_code=patriotact

Here's an editorial from Saturday's New York Times which spells
out why the current compromise is nothing but a whitewash:

Another Cave-In on the Patriot Act
Published: February 11, 2006

The Patriot Act has been one of the few issues on which
Congress has shown backbone lately. Last year, it refused to
renew expiring parts of the act until greater civil liberties
protections were added. But key members of the Senate have now
caved, agreeing to renew these provisions in exchange for only
minimal improvements. At a time when the public is growing
increasingly concerned about the lawlessness of the Bush
administration's domestic spying, the Senate should insist that
any reauthorization agreement do more to protect Americans
against improper secret searches.

When the Patriot Act was passed after Sept. 11, 2001,
Congress made some of its most far-reaching provisions temporary
so it would be able to reconsider them later on. Those
provisions were set to expire last December, but Congress agreed
to a very short extension so greater civil liberties protections
could be added. This week, four key Republican senators - later
backed by two Democrats - said that they had agreed to a deal
with the White House. It is one that does little to protect
Americans from government invasions of their privacy.

One of the most troubling aspects of the Patriot Act is the
"gag order" imposed by Section 215, which prohibits anyone
holding financial, medical and other private records of ordinary
Americans from saying anything when the government issues a
subpoena for those records. That means that a person whose
records are being taken, and whose privacy is being invaded, has
no way to know about the subpoena and no way to challenge it.

Rather than removing this gag order, the deal keeps it in
place for a full year - too long for Americans to wait to learn
that the government is spying on them. Even after a year,
someone holding such records would have to meet an exceedingly
high standard to get the gag order lifted. It is not clear that
this change has much value at all.

The compromise also fails to address another problem with
Section 215: it lets the government go on fishing expeditions,
spying on Americans with no connection to terrorism or foreign
powers. The act should require the government, in order to get a
subpoena, to show that there is a connection between the
information it is seeking and a terrorist or a spy.

But the deal would allow subpoenas in instances when there
are reasonable grounds for simply believing that information is
relevant to a terrorism investigation. That is an extremely low
bar.

One of the most well-publicized objections to the Patriot
Act is the fact that it allows the government to issue national
security letters, an extremely broad investigative tool, to
libraries, forcing them to turn over their patrons' Internet
records. The wording of the compromise is unclear. If it
actually says that national security letters cannot be used to
get Internet records from libraries, that would be an
improvement, but it is not clear that it does.

In late December, it looked as if there was bipartisan
interest in the Senate for changing the worst Patriot Act
provisions and standing up for Americans' privacy rights. Now
the hope of making the needed improvements has faded
considerably.

This "compromise" is really a capitulation. Let your
representatives know that we're not satisfied with lip service
to American liberties. We want the real thing.

Thanks for all that you do,

Matt Holland
TrueMajorityACTION Coordinator

Visit the web address below to tell your friends about this.
http://action.truemajority.org/truemajorityaction/join-forward.html?domain=truemajorityaction&r=_dS3fYd1XRvh&