While you were distracted.....(the Patriot Act)

Dover

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Sun Oct-30-05 10:36 PM
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While you were distracted.....(the Patriot Act)

Edited on Sun Oct-30-05 11:07 PM by Dover

Endless sunset

Posted by Rachel Neumann at 1:03 PM on October 28, 2005.

Endless sunset
While you were, ah, distracted, Congress was quietly renewing every major provision of the Patriot Act.

Most of the provisions of the USA Patriot Act, including access to library records, were supposed to "sunset" this month, five years after the law's passing. Instead, both the House and the Senate have already voted to renew the entire act, with only minor revisions. While they're at it, they'd like to add some decidedly unpatriotic amendments to expand the death penalty.

These new amendments would let prosecutors shop around for another jury if the one they have is deadlocked on the death penalty; triple the number of terrorism-related crimes eligible for the death penalty; and authorize the death penalty for a person who gives money to an organization whose members kill someone, even if the contributor did not know that the organization or its members were planning to kill.

The Patriot Act was enacted during what President Bush called "a state of emergency." It wasn't even read by most of the members who voted for it. But the whole point of the sunset clause was to allow Congresspeople to actually read the bill and debate it in calmer times. Now, the Act is effectively being made permanent with little or no debate or discussion.

(snip)

Rachel Neumann is Rights & Liberties Editor at AlterNet.

http://alternet.org/blogs/themix/27501/

For a list of possible actions you can get involved with, please see: www.bordc.org/involved/4thanniversary.php
http://www.bordc.org/resources/fliers.php

The Patriot Act - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USA_PATRIOT_Act

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House approves renewal of Patriot Act
Critics voice concern over civil liberties

Friday, July 22, 2005; Posted: 3:25 a.m. EDT (07:25 GMT)

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The House voted by a wide margin Thursday night to renew expiring provisions of the USA Patriot Act, the collection of antiterrorism measures passed after the September 11, 2001, attacks.

The final vote was 257-171. The bill makes permanent 14 of 16 provisions in the act set to expire next year and extends two others for another 10 years.

Passage came with the specter of terrorism fresh in lawmakers' minds after another round of bombing incidents in London earlier in the day. (Full story)

The Senate is considering its own reauthorization of the Patriot Act, and the differences between the two versions will have to be hashed out in a conference committee in the coming months...cont'd

http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/07/21/patriot.act/

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Senate Wants Patriot Act Extended

(AP) The GOP-controlled Senate voted Friday to make permanent most of the expiring provisions of the anti-terrorist USA Patriot Act.

Senators, however, set new four-year expiration dates on the most controversial provisions of the law, those allowing federal agents to use roving wiretaps and to search library and medical records.

The passage of the Senate legislation, which was by voice vote minutes before the chamber left for a month-long summer break, sets up a fall confrontation with the Republican-controlled House, which wanted 10-year expirations, or sunsets, on those two provisions...cont

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/07/30/politics/main712865.shtml

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AP) Some of the nation's most powerful business groups are splitting with the Bush administration over whether to restrict the anti-terror USA Patriot Act.

The business groups complained to Congress on Wednesday that the Patriot Act makes it too easy for the government to get confidential business records. That put them at odds with one of President Bush's top priorities: the unfettered extension of the law passed after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

In the first organized criticism of the act from the business sector, these groups endorsed amendments that would require investigators to say how the information they seek is linked to individual suspected terrorists or spies, and would allow businesses to challenge the requests in courts and to speak publicly about those requests.

Their views could make a difference as Congress heads toward a vote on whether to extend some controversial provisions of the act that expire at the end of the year. ..cont'd

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/10/06/business/main917332.shtml

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Patriot Act to Be Extended Indefinitely
"Many of the wiretapping and foreign intelligence amendments sunset on December 31, 2005." <1> (http://www.fas.org/irp/crs/RL31377.pdf)

On July 21, 2005, the US House of Representatives "voted to extend indefinitely the anti-terrorist USA Patriot Act, while limiting to 10 years two provisions of the law that have become linchpins in the ongoing congressional debate: allowing federal agents to use roving wiretaps and to search library and medical records," according to Associated Press's Glen Johnson.

"Forty-three Democrats joined 214 Republicans in passing the bill, which dropped 14 of 16 expiration dates on provisions initially drafted into the law shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks," he wrote, and only hours earlier "the Senate Judiciary Committee approved its own general extension of the law, but it called for Congress to re-examine the wiretap and library provisions after another four-year time period. The full Senate likely will vote on the bill this fall, before the competing measures are reconciled in a conference committee." <2> (http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050722/ap_on_go_co/patriot_act)

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Patriot_Act_I