NYT: Little Progress in Bid to Extend Patriot Act

[DeepModem Mom]

Little Progress in Bid to Extend Patriot Act
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
Published: May 27, 2005


WASHINGTON, May 26 - The Senate Intelligence Committee failed to reach final agreement on Thursday on a proposal that would expand the Federal Bureau of Investigation's powers to demand records and monitor mailings in terror investigations, but officials said they were confident that the committee would come to a consensus on the issue.

The committee met in private for two and a half hours amid continuing complaints from civil liberties advocates and some Democrats that the proposal would give federal investigators too much power to conduct "fishing expeditions" in pursuing terrorism leads. Senate Republican leaders and the Bush administration, who are backing the proposal, say it provides the F.B.I. with essential tools in fighting terrorism.

"You can fight terrorism ferociously without throwing people's rights in the trash can," Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon and a member of the committee, said after emerging from the meeting.

Mr. Wyden said he wanted to see greater checks placed on the government's surveillance and investigative powers. He said he was concerned that giving the F.B.I. the authority to issue so-called administrative subpoenas, which would demand records in terror cases without a judge's approval, would amount to "a license to fish."

He and other senators on the committee would not discuss details of the meeting because it was a closed session, disappointing civil rights advocates who said they thought the debate over the government's counterterrorism powers should be completely open to the public....


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/27/politics/27patriot.html

[wtmusic]

1. This is too much good news for one week

I feel I might swoon...:silly:

[Rose Siding]

2. Levin said they've been read the riot act.

And WHAT'S this "continuing complaints from...SOME Democrats"??! Which Democrats AREN'T complaining?

OOoooo, I hope Rockefeller is doing a dance on their heads in his expensive shoes!

[carnie_sf]

3. That's good news

[nadinbrzezinski]

4. ok these fascists deserve NOT TO GET THIS

[hang a left]

5. Anyone really think

that not only will they renew the "sunseting" patriot act but an expanded one?

[laheina]

6. If they have their way

then they will. Of course, it flies in the face of the Constitution, but since * got into the WH, nothing shocks me anymore.

What I do hope, is that some of the wanks in the Congress start exercising their oversight powers and fight this thing.

[teryang]

7. Senate murdering Bill of Rights in closed session

These people remind me of Pierre Laval's rationalizations when the French Republic was re-established. Laval characterized the Vichy regime's collaboration with Nazi oppression and human rights violations as a negotiating process and an attempt to stall and limit the numbers of Jews, POWs, and resisters sent to the Nazi death camps.

In retrospect, nobody believed that anyone could have believed it at the time. After a summary trial, the former Prime Minister was executed.

Who negotiates their human rights away? Who makes it into law? Pierre Laval had a gun to his head. Do our Senators have guns to their heads?