Pacific Views
You've been had. You've been took. You've been hoodwinked, bamboozled, led astray, run amok. - Malcolm X
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| Pacific ViewsYou've been had. You've been took. You've been hoodwinked, bamboozled, led astray, run amok. - Malcolm X |
Following on my post last night, the conference committee voted out a bill that contained all the worst elements that Rep. Conyers warned of in his post. Nevertheless, the bill from the conference committee has to be approved by a majority of the House of Representatives and the Senate. That means there is still time to make it very painful for your representatives or senators to cast a vote betraying the Constitution to the radical and power-hungry Republicans who want to impose a police state on us.
Fortunately, Senator Russ Feingold is going to do his part in helping provide the space for us to have our voices heard. As he reported in his dKos post tonight:
The conference committee has met about reauthorizing the Patriot Act, and what we are hearing is not good. I plan to fight hard to try to stop a bad bill from becoming law.
Back in July, I supported a compromise bill in the Senate to reauthorize the 16 provisions of the Patriot Act that expire at the end of this year. Even though that bill didn't include everything I have proposed to protect the rights and freedoms of innocent, law-abiding Americans, it contained some important modifications to the Patriot Act. The bill eventually passed the Senate unanimously.
I was hopeful, after the Senate bill passed, that the reasonable language in that measure would prevail instead of the overly permissive House language on things like Section 215, which allows access to business and library records, and the provision allowing the government to conduct "sneak and peek" searches. But instead, the conference appears to have decided to undermine even the limited positive things we achieved this summer.
I wanted to let you know we are looking at all of the procedural options in the Senate that can be used to stop the Patriot Act conference report this week. We may not be successful but we have to try.
When I voted against the original Patriot Act in 2001, I was the only member of the Senate to do so. Today, I am a part of a strong bipartisan coalition of senators who think we can protect our freedoms and fight the war on terrorism. Here is a letter that the six bipartisan cosponsors of the SAFE Act, a bill first introduced in 2003 to fix the Patriot Act, sent to the conferees today regarding our concerns about the direction in which the conference seems to be headed.
My work has been informed by some of the comments you have posted about issues on this site and I ask you today to give me some feedback about reauthorizing the Patriot Act. I appreciate your input.
Provide Senator Feingold with your feedback in the comment section of his post. But remember to also contact your representatives to let them know that you consider a vote for this bill in its current form is a betrayal of their duty to protect and defend the Constitution. We cannot afford to let the wannabe dictators to get an easy vote which will destroy our rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights.
Senator Feingold promises to filibuster this bill and will use the Bill of Rights as one of his arguments against this bill. Let's join him on the barracades.
Posted by Mary at November 18, 2005 12:09 AM | US Politics | Technorati links |