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 ...
Not letting our intell services openly communicate with each other is just insane! They might as well throw out their computers because they're useless.
What sort of fool are you?
I didn't suggest that the Church Committee wrote the 4th Amendment, but the PA goes a long way towards negating it.
IOW, you don't like what Church did, so to undo that, you support other legislation that violates the 4th.
And clearer?
Then the blame for failure of the bill should go to those who, by writing in unconstitutional provisions, overreached.
The PA is an attempt to hide the repeated failures of our security agencies by giving them extra powers.
Disagree. The Patriot Act cuts through all the obfuscatory laws and measures installed by the Clinton Admin (and allied bureacracies aligned with if not "run by" Liberal democrats) which nullified the abilities of law enforcement agencies to actually DO THEIR JOBS.
Powers that undermine our consitution and do little more than what the agencies could do previously with consitutional restraint.
Name these "powers" please. Are you referring to the ability to monitor "communications" which have a high-flag of suspectability in re terrorists and operative cells here in the US?
It's a smoke screen.
The Patriot Act is not a smoke screen. The Patriot Act has caught terrorists. So name for me the "innocent people" in the US who "suspect" they are being spied upon? People for the American Way? Lew Rockwell? Anti-War Coalitions? IndyMedia?
Where do you see anything that I wrote even remotely indicating that I despise the Founders?
You think that we can let the government ignore the restraints set up by our Founders, but you accuse me of despising them. Get a grip.
Thank you.
Admittedly, I've seen these posters too. They are guided by a false sense of security; and this is why they support the ideology of "destroying the village in order to save it". It's a projected (false, albeit) sense of schadenfreude. Just like the liberals who supported Tookie: They believe the murder of the innocent will only happen to other people, but never themselves.
Wonder why the Dems aren't criticizing him? He was a Republican after all.
If a nuclear bomb destroys your city; that's when civil liberties are most important? Is that what you really meant???? huh?
Badray. You might find yourself better supported, in say, Lew Rockwell's forum. Why don't you bring up the revolution of 1776 and task the current leadership (dem or pubbie) with being "sell-outs"? You are mixing apples and oranges and thinking it works as a "logic" point re Patriot Act. It doesn't work.
Before the War of 1812 President Madison paid $50,000 for a report on the private conversations of Americans who sympathized with the British.
Poor ignorant James Madison. If only he'd known why the Founders wrote the Constitution and the Fourth Amendment and understood "liberty"- like you guys do today.
I agree with your post.
Glad I understand you better. The United States is under attack by enemies abroad and domestic, and you want to pretend it isn't happening.
Those for the Patriot Act have been routinely putting sunset caps on provisions of the PA. I've no doubts they'd do the same, as you suggest.
Bump.
Are your feelings hurt because mrsmith is not in lockstep with your ideology?
I searched the article and did not find mention of the Gorelick Wall. However, we can assume for a moment that this is what he meant. Our security agencies had all the tools necesary, with constitutional restraint, to discover terrorists in the US, but they downplayed the need and chose not to.
The Patriot Act will not, can not, does not break down the Gorelick Wall it only gives existing powers to the security agencies, with less consitutional restraint.
The Patriot Act cuts through all the obfuscatory laws and measures installed by the Clinton Admin (and allied bureacracies aligned with if not "run by" Liberal democrats) which nullified the abilities of law enforcement agencies to actually DO THEIR JOBS.
Can you name these laws?
Are you referring to the ability to monitor "communications" which have a high-flag of suspectability in re terrorists and operative cells here in the US?
There are existing wiretap laws that are restrained by the consitution. The PA softens these restraints for expediency, and in the process makes US at risk of losing freedoms.
The Patriot Act is not a smoke screen. The Patriot Act has caught terrorists.
It may have caught terrorists, but it is still a smoke screen to deflect our attention from the fact that agencies fought amongst themselves, misread the terrorist threat and put us at risk for 9/11.
So name for me the "innocent people" in the US who "suspect" they are being spied upon? People for the American Way? Lew Rockwell? Anti-War Coalitions? IndyMedia?
Even if not one US citizen was spied upon, the threat is still there for a less-than-scrupulous administration, to use it against us.
Look at Clinton. He likely used the threat of IRS audit to control leaks and witnesses. How much more in danger are we when consitutional restraints are outright eliminated?
I'll pass on the PA. The security agencies are more than capable with the tools they have. The PA is a smokescreen to hide the fact that they failed through negligence.
No doubts, this brings you a sense of elation. That you are right, have always been right; but no one bothered to listen to your sole voice screaming into the wilderness.
I'm not depressed over what happened with the Patriot Act, yesterday. I'm disappointed, assuredly. But not depressed.
Look on the bright side, kjvail: Democrat mayors in now two states are railing free wifi services for EVERYONE! We can all now act as militia minutemen and monitor everyone else's communications for ourselves! Oh, what fun Gertrude and Laverne will have at the laundromat!
Something an old timer like you may appreciate, or find tedious and pointless LOL!
In our Founders day terrorists would have had no federal constitutional protections!
They would have been dealt with by a state government according to the constitution of that states. John Brown, for instance, was captured by federal troops and then turned over to the COmmonwealth of Virginia for trial on treason- against Virginia.
It never gets mentioned but really this whole debate is a result of the broad interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment by the federal courts.
Not so.
First off, I have an MA in foreign affairs - Soviet and Chinese emphasis. Moreover, I have followed the Middle East in general (and Sadaam Hussein in particular) since the 1970s. So, while I know nothing about your background, I would venture to suggest that I am far better informed about the external threats facing this country than the average Joe.
Second, I believe in American exceptionalism. The United States is (supposed to be) a constitutional republic. As such, we must defend ourselves within the constraints of our founding document or legitimately alter that document, not simply "pretend" that its constraints on government power do not exist and may be ignored when we find them inconvenient.
The WOT must be won on the ground in the Middle East. It cannot be won by the federal government waging war on the American people in the name of security - and in the unlikely event that it should nonetheless succeed in doing so, that victory would be hollow and meaningless. Without the Constitution, America means nothing. Nothing.
You are, of course, correct that we are also under attack by domestic enemies. Two of the gravest internal threats are Democrats AND Republicans. In the final analysis, taking away our liberties "for the common good" in the name of either socialism or security amounts to the same thing. Advocates of either course are de facto enemies of the Constitution.
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