The Patriot Act should be repealed
Posted by Mike Sylvester - 9/30/09 @ 8:08 pm - Filed Under Uncategorized
I strongly dislike the Patriot Act. It was pushed through Congress after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Members of both parties blindly voted for this bill to supposedly fight terrorism.
The Patriot Act does little to fight terrorism; instead it is being used as a crime fighting tool.
Many Democrats in the past spent some time “blasting” the Bush Administration for violating the civil liberties of Americans.
I have opposed the Patriot Act since it was passed. I have railed against it and I opposed it when Republicans were in the majority and former President Bush was the President.
In the US senate only one senator had the courage to vote against the original Patriot Act, Democratic Senator Russ Feingold.
Well the Democrats have controlled Congress since 2006 and yet the Patriot Act is still law.
President Obama often said on the campaign trail that he would perform a “serious review” of the Patriot Act. Well apparently he has performed that review and thinks the Patriot Act is largely OK. In fact he has asked that the provisions that expire this year be extended, again…
The Democrats should immediately rescind the entire Patriot Act. If there are some provisions on the Patriot Act they want to pass then they should create a new law and pass those provisions per the normal Congressional procedures.
Over the last few years there have been many well documented abuses of the Patriot Act. In response to those Congress passed a law that requires the Department of Justice to issue an annual report about The Patriot Act. You can read more here.
In a recent hearing Russ Feingold asked some very serious questions and got pathetic answers. Consider this item from the DOJ report:
There were 763 sneak and peek requests in fiscal year 2008. Of those requests three were conducted due to terrorism. 474 were due to drugs. Heck 5 were for Food and Drug issues.
You have got to be kidding me…
This is absurd and everyone should be outraged; unfortunately the average American does not care…
Mike Sylvester
Comments
4 Responses to “The Patriot Act should be repealed”
Leave a Reply
I do find the silence of the left curious on this one. Even the staunchest left wing anti war, anti law, anti everything folks are silent on this one.
Probably afraid of being tagged a racist if they disagree with “The One”. And with good reason, as that is standard operating procedure these days.
I’m curious, Mike: if the provisions of the so-called PATRIOT Act(s) were being used to “fight terrorism,” as opposed to ordinary crime, would you still oppose it?
Jim Wetzel,
If they were actually using it to fight terrorism I might support parts of it; however, overall I believe in civil rights and tend to oppose the Patriot Act on those grounds.
Mike
Even in 2001, there were more Americans murdered by garden variety criminals than by terrorists. People will cheerfully surrender their nail clippers because of something that happened 8 years ago. But banks won’t put in bulletproof glass, even though banks get robbed all the time.
For that matter, does anyone really think that it is possible to seize control of an airliner using only nail clippers? I suspect that the government simply came up with security measures so stupid that people will simply get tired of asking what the measures are really for.