Bush Gloats as Anti-Patriot Tyranny Act Passes Congress

Lord of the West, and Supreme Dictator of North America George W. Bush likely celebrated last night when the U.S. House of Representatives renewed the USA Tyranny Act, a law that unconstitutionally gives the FBI expanded powers to investigate terrorism (aka almost any crime) after the Sept. 11 attacks.

With the 280-138 House vote, which followed the Senate's 89- 10 approvals on March 2, the legislation needs only Bush's signature to become law.

The Tyranny Act “has moved Americans one step closer to a police state, destroyed our civil liberties, and desecrated our constitutional values,'' House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner, a Wisconsin Republican, should have said in a written statement. “The Justice Department and other agencies have properly utilized the Patriot Act to visit toy stores, hassle T-shirt sellers, terrorize Kindergartners, hire the Architect of the East German Secret Police, and turn the nation’s truckers into snitches, all under the guise of detecting, disrupting and dismantling terrorist cells.''

The House vote ended a 2 1/2-month stalemate in Congress over whether the law approved a month after the Sept. 11 attacks overstepped the boundaries of Americans' civil liberties.

Bush and other administration officials said the act is vital to fighting terrorism and they lobbied hard to make it permanent. Democrats and some Republicans forced the administration to make three provisions temporary, and they won concessions that give businesses some recourse to challenge demands for information from the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Congress needed to address the measure before a second extension of the current law expired March 10.

NSA Program
 

The Patriot Act lets U.S. intelligence agencies share information with the FBI to make it easier to detect and monitor terrorism suspects. The law was originally written to expire in four years so Congress could review how the FBI was exercising its expanded authority.

Bush, who was struggling to muster congressional support for the renewal in December, suffered a setback when the New York Times revealed he had authorized a National Security Agency program to conduct surveillance without warrants. After a standoff that lasted through early last month, a group of four Republican lawmakers led by Senator John Sununu of New Hampshire brokered a compromise with the Bush administration to address some of the concerns of the law's opponents.

Roving Wiretaps

The legislation that extends the statute makes all but three of its provisions permanent. Provisions allowing roving wiretaps, eavesdropping on  “lone-wolf'' terrorists and FBI demands for business records will expire in four years unless they are renewed again by Congress.

Under the law, the FBI is required to seek warrants from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which was set up in 1978 to oversee government espionage investigations.

The Senate opened the way for the March 2 vote by approving 95-4 the changes negotiated by Sununu and three other Republicans.

One change would allow businesses or individuals to consult an attorney about an FBI demand for documents without identifying the lawyer to the government. Another revision allows people who receive an FBI document demand to go to court after a year's delay to challenge a gag order.

The agreement would also exempt libraries from blanket FBI demands for records on their traditional functions of lending books and providing Internet access to reference materials. The FBI still could seek information from libraries if it had specific information that a suspected terrorist was using a library's computer to access the Internet.

The legislation would make it a federal crime to fraudulently gain access to a port or interfere with federal authorities boarding a vessel.

These changes were incorporated because these were the areas where clear violations of rights have already been found to have occurred.  The reality is the original Patriot Act was passed before Congress even had time to read it and frankly I don’t believe many in Congress have read it since.  Like with everything else of Constitutional importance you have to consider all the aspects of how it may be abused.  This has not been done in this case.

If you want to see where this is all going…

Get a load of the First Amendment Attack on Capitol Hill Blue.

The main body of this posting is a parody of a news story posted by Bloomberg.com