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Come Back in Ten Years…

By Montag | Related entries in Legislation, The War On Terrorism

…Then We Can Talk About Giving Your 4th Amendment Rights Back

The House Judiciary Committee graciously decided to not permanently infringe on our guarantee against unreasonable searches and seizures by passing an amendment to Rep. James Sensenbrenner’s proposed legislation to make the entire Patriot Act permanent:

…during Judiciary Committee debate on Wednesday, California Rep. Dan Lungren suggested including 10-year “sunset provisions” to two key clauses, meaning they would need to be reauthorized by Congress once again in 2015.

That amendment was eventually adopted 26-2, with all but one Republican and all but one Democrat supporting it.

What two key clauses?

…the two clauses that would not be permanent were the library clause and another dealing with so-called roving wiretaps, which allows the government to eavesdrop on suspects as they switch from phone to phone. Previously, law enforcement agents had to get a judge’s permission for each phone number they wanted to monitor.

Reuters: Republicans agree to limits on Patriot Act

Don’t get me wrong, I am all in favor of foiling terrorist plots before they can be carried out. But at what cost? Is the potential for abuse that comes along with the permissions granted in the Patriot Act an acceptable risk?

Patrick Henry had that old saying… “Give me liberty or give me…” well, something else. Are Americans still willing to hold to this conviction? Or has that ’something else’ changed?


This entry was posted on Thursday, July 14th, 2005 and is filed under Legislation, The War On Terrorism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

One Response to “Come Back in Ten Years…”

  1. Ratatosk, Squirrel of Discord Says:
    July 21st, 2005 at 1:57 pm

    Those who don’t earn liberty seem unable to grasp its immense value. We as a nation have become a society focused on the moment, not the future. Many of the people I talk to are much more concerned about evil terrorists bombs than their freedom.

    We should only be glad that Bush isn’t really the complete nutter that Hitler was, I think America would have handed him the Keys to everything on 9/12.

    It makes me sad

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