Posted on 12/16/2005 11:58:17 PM PST by neverdem
Op-Ed Contributor
YESTERDAY the Senate failed to reauthorize the USA Patriot Act, as a Democratic-led filibuster prevented a vote. This action - which leaves the act, key elements of which are due to expire on Dec. 31, in limbo - represents a grave potential threat to the nation's security. I support the extension of the Patriot Act for one simple reason: Americans must use every legal and constitutional tool in their arsenal to fight terrorism and protect their lives and liberties.
The attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, made clear that the old rules no longer work. The terrorists who attacked us seek to kill innocent men, women and children of all races and creeds. They seek to destroy our liberties. They willingly kill themselves in their effort to bring death and suffering to as many innocents as they can, here in this country or anywhere in the world where freedom has a foothold.
In October 2001, after six weeks of intense scrutiny and debate, Congress passed the Patriot Act overwhelmingly (98 to 1 in the Senate and 356 to 66 in the House). We had already received clear signals about our enemies' intentions, in the first attacks against the World Trade Center in 1993, the bombings of our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 and the attack on the Navy destroyer Cole two years after that. Despite the abundance of warning signs, it took Sept. 11 to wake us to the dangers we face.
The central provisions of the Patriot Act allow law enforcement and the intelligence community to share information. This might seem elementary, but for years law enforcement had been stymied by a legal wall that prevented agencies from sharing information. For four years now, inter-agency collaboration, made possible by the Patriot Act, has played an important...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Thanks.
I am always amazed at how willing FReepers are to surrender liberty to feel safe when 'safe' is really nothing more than a feeling. You can give up all liberty and still not actually be any safer, so why give up any?
I guess those of us that are true to conservative principles are stuck between the National Socialists and International Socialists.
Oh, please! Personally, I think Rudy has a real shot -- even with his liberal positions on choice, I think he may be the best leader among all the GOP contenders. And he's proven what can be done to address what seem to be insurmountable problems (like crime in NYC) with focused leadership. And vs. the Hildabeast??? I think he'd crush her.
Rudy Guliani not pleased Congress is letting the Gorelick Wall go back up as of 12/31.
You mean as allies or targets? LOL
But if Kerry were president - forget it.
That's the thing. We all need to consider that it's not what will or will not happen when applied justly, but what can happen when it's in the hands of the next Janet Reno or Hillary Clinton who would misuse it. Even if you trust Bush, he won't be there forever, will he?
This is a good example of why the living constitutionalists are and will always be successful. You don't want the liberty our Founders legislated- you want more.
The Dems' Church committee wrote laws removing the powers to repel attacks that presidents were intentionally given by the authors of the Constitution. You prefer the liberties Kerry and his gang gave you then to those of the Founders- because they're more.
A constitution is wasted on a irresponsible citizenry.
Amen. The only valid measure of patriotism in my book is scrupulous fidelity to the Constitution and Bill of Rights. Without those, our flag doesn't mean squat. Both major parties are guilty of conspiracy to murder American liberty; defeating the obscenely misnamed Patriot Act constitutes a baby step away from the abyss and is the only patriotic thing one can do who values American liberty. These people who demand security at the expense of freedom make me sick. To those who cherish the delusion that observance of the Constitution is optional in wartime, I say: "freedom isn't free" in more ways than one.
So you want to respond by ignoring the 4th Amendment?
Are you nuts?
Do you want safety more than liberty?
Here's the quote that I was looking for. Things have really changed, haven't they?
"You do not examine legislation in the light of the benefits it will convey if properly administered, but in the light of the wrongs it would do and the harms it would cause if improperly administered."
-- President Lyndon Johnson
As bad as Johnson was, he understood this much.
"It is proper to take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties. We hold this prudent jealousy to be the first duty of citizens, and one of the noblest characteristics of the late Revolution. The freeman of America did not wait till usurped power had strengthen itself by exercise, and entangled the question in precedents. They saw all the consequences in the principle, and they avoided the consequences by denying the principle."
--James Madison,"A Memorial and Remonstrance", 1785: Works 1:163
There are parts of the Patriot Act that are worrisome, but some of the biggest critics seem to want to go back to the good old days where there was a "wall" keeping various departments from sharing info about terrorists. At the same time, Democrats (and helpful Republicans like McCain) seem to want to grant foreign terrorists the same rights before a court that a citizen would have.
I say we sunset it at end of Bush's term.
"You have rights antecedent to all earthly governments; rights that cannot be repealed or restrained by human laws; rights derived from the Great Legislator of the Universe".
John Adams
Samuel Adams, one of the great leaders of the American Revolution said:
"The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil Constitution, are worth defending at all hazards; and it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors: they purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood, and transmitted them to us with care and diligence. It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation, enlightened as it is, if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or to be cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men."
"I have no reason to suppose that he, who would take away my Liberty, would not when he had me in his Power, take away everything else." ~ John Locke
"There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty."
- Right-wing extremist John Adams
It is natural for men, who wish to hasten the adoption of a measure, to tell us, now is the crisis--now is the critical moment which must be seized, or all will be lost: and to shut the door aqainst free enquiry, whenever conscious the thing presented has defects in it, which time and investigation will probably discover. This has been the custom of tyrants and their dependants in all ages. "
The Federal Farmer, October 8th, 1787
and yet he goes on to say,
The attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, made clear that the old rules no longer work.
What old rules? The constitution?
The PA is an attempt to hide the repeated failures of our security agencies by giving them extra powers. Powers that undermine our consitution and do little more than what the agencies could do previously with consitutional restraint.
It's a smoke screen.
The "liberty" you think feel you gain by despising our Founders' work is no liberty at all.
To make a government requires no great prudence. Settle the seat of power, teach obedience, and the work is done.
To give freedom is still more easy. It is not necessary to guide; it only requires to let go the rein.
But to form a free government--that is, to temper together these opposite elements of liberty and restraint in one consistent work--requires much thought, deep reflection, a sagacious, powerful, and combining mind. - Burke
BTW, just what liberty did our Founders 'legislate'?
My liberty comes from God. My rights are inherent. They aren't legislated and they aren't granted or guaranteed by the Constitution. The Founder's knew that. They wrote the Constitution to delegate certain limited and defined powers to the government -- telling them what they could and must do -- and in the BOR, reminded them not to infringe on our rights -- in effect, telling them what they shall not and cannot do.
I heartily agree. Well written.
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