By PLS
The saving grace of the U.S. Senate is that it often does serve as a deliberative body, even if, at times, it is steamrolled into passing dreadful legislation.
The dreadful legislation now under re-consideration is the so-called USA Patriot Act. It was rammed through Congress after 9/11.
The Senate Intelligence Committee is finding it difficult to reach consensus on what to do about certain Patriot Act provisions that expire this year. One sticking point has to do with law enforcers’ ability to obtain citizens’ records though “administrative subpoenas,” which is to say, without judicial sanction.
Most Patriot Act provisions due to sunset on New Year’s eve involve powers so sweeping that even representatives reduced to a state of cowering panicky backbonelessness could not approve them without severely limiting their period of applicability. The Bush administration wishes to extend and make permanent those powers and characteristically prefers to do so without public debate. Civil liberties organizations have raised valid objections to the secrecy of the process as well as to provisions which ignore Bill of Rights guarantees.
Fortunately a majority of the Senate Intelligence Committee is also disinclined to rubberstamp Bush administration demands to make a dangerous act yet more draconian, so no bill has been reported out of committee. There is no failure here. The deadlock within the committee is actually a triumph for the democratic process, a clear indication that the issues must be resolved in open debate on the floor of the Senate.
By now it should be clear that the Bush administration cannot be trusted to tell the truth about its intentions or its actions. Sad to say, this regime can be trusted all too often to abuse both power and confidentiality. Arbitrary arrest. Lengthy detention without charges. Physical and mental abuse amounting to torture and leading to death. Attempts to punish for thought or association as well as action. Doctored reports. Systematic withholding of information and documents. These are the hallmarks of the Bush administration. They are also symptomatic of a misuse of power that the US Constitution, unlike the USA Patriot Act, was devised to prevent.
Senate Democrats like Russell Feingold of Wisconsin, John Rockefeller of West Virginia and Diane Feinstein of California are right. We should be thinking in terms of curtailing, not extending or expanding the scope of a hugely controversial act never responsibly debated in the first place.
Testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee, the FBI General Counsel Valerie Caproni confessed that delays inherent in the requirement for judicial sanction have led to "no specific instance" of harm to the national security.
That brave statement undermines the Bush administration’s case. I wonder how long Valerie Caproni will survive as FBI General Counsel.