Senate Passes Temporary Re-Authorization Of Patriot Act..."Sneak & Peek"

Senate Passes Short-Term Patriot Act Re-authorization


The Senate passed by voice vote Wednesday night legislation that would temporarily extend three Patriot Act provisions set to expire at the end of this month.

The bill would keep in place the Patriot Act’s “lone wolf,” business records and “roving wiretap” powers until Feb. 28, 2011. The House has yet to consider the measure.

Both the House and Senate had begun work on long-term renewals, but the bills contained major differences.

The Senate Patriot Act bill would reauthorize all of the authorities. The House version would renew the records and “roving wiretap” powers but not the “lone wolf” authority, which the government has never used. The bills also would include new oversight for the authorities.

The Senate bill was approved by the Judiciary Committee last October and is awaiting floor action. The House bill, which won Judiciary Committee approval last November, is also awaiting floor action.

“I would have preferred to add oversight and judicial review improvements to any extension of expiring provisions in the USA PATRIOT Act,” Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) said in a statement Wednesday night.

Here is a summary of the provisions that are due to expire:

* Lone wolf: Allows the government to track a target without any discernible affiliation to a foreign power, such as an international terrorist group. The provision applies only to non-U.S. persons. The government has never used it.

* Business records: Allows Investigators to compel third parties, including financial services and travel and telephone companies, to provide them access to a suspect’s records without the suspect’s knowledge.

* Roving wiretaps: Allows the government to monitor phone lines or Internet accounts that a terrorism suspect may be using, regardless of whether others who are not suspects also regularly use them. The government must provide the FISA court with specific information showing the suspect is purposely switching means of communication to evade detection.






U.S. House Renews Patriot Act


The House of Representatives re-authorized the Patriot Act for one year Thursday.

The vote was 315-97 .

Many liberals in the House opposed the controversial act, saying it tramps Constitutional protections and civil liberties.

Congress adopted the Patriot Act shortly after September 11th.

Many lawmakers wanted to rewrite or even kill some of the most controversial provisions in the act. But Congressional leaders didn’t have the appetite for a major battle with the economy and health care reform swinging in the balance.

Many of the renewed provisions involve wiretaps and eavesdropping measures.

The Senate ok'd the package earlier this week. President Obama is expected to sign the bill into law.

Sources: Main Justice, Fox News, Wikipedia, Youtube

Feingold Angry Over Loss Of Public Option, Snowe Voting No

Feingold: Obama Responsible For Loss Of Public Option

Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wisc.) formally announced on Sunday that he would support the Senate's final version of health care reform. But in doing so he cast blame for the loss of a public option for insurance coverage partially on the president's shoulders and urged House and Senate negotiators to re-insert the government-run plan back into the legislation during conference committee.

From the Wisconsin Democrat's press office came the following statement:

I've been fighting all year for a strong public option to compete with the insurance industry and bring health care spending down. I continued that fight during recent negotiations, and I refused to sign onto a deal to drop the public option from the Senate bill. Unfortunately, the lack of support from the administration made keeping the public option in the bill an uphill struggle. Removing the public option from the Senate bill is the wrong move, and eliminates $25 billion in savings. I will be urging members of the House and Senate who draft the final bill to make sure this essential provision is included.


But while the loss of the public option is a bitter pill to swallow, on balance, the bill still delivers meaningful reform, and the cost of inaction is simply too high. This bill significantly expands coverage and helps protect Wisconsinites from high costs and insurance company abuses, such as denying or restricting coverage based on pre-existing conditions. The bill also improves a flawed Medicare formula that denies Wisconsin fair reimbursement rates, encourages the kind of low-cost, high-value care practiced in our state, increases access to home and community-based long-term care, and reduces federal budget deficits by $132 billion over the next decade.

One of the prominent progressives in Congress, Feingold's statement gives voice to the frustration that many Democrats have felt when watching the health care debate unfold. The Obama White House, quite consciously, refused to draw a line around the public plan even as Senate Democrats practically begged for them to do so.

The decision may have been strategically astute -- positioning the president appropriately for when the public option was to meet its natural sacrifice. But it also opens the president to criticism like Feingold's and it feeds the meme of Obama's timidity.




Olympia Snowe Will Vote Against Health Care Reform


Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), considered one of very few Republicans who might vote for the Senate health care bill, said Sunday that she would not.

"This process denies us the opportunity to thoroughly and carefully and deliberately evaluate what's at stake," she said on CBS.

She also told the New York Times it was a rushed vote on a "a take-it-or-leave-it package."

Democrats no longer need Snowe's vote -- but the Washington Monthly's Steve Benen points out that they courted her anyway only to have her object over the debate's speed.

I just can't figure out what on earth Snowe is talking about. She voted with Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee reform plan, but now appears to be looking for an excuse to oppose the effort. But to sound even remotely credible, Snowe will have to do better than this.

Snowe has been complaining about the speed of the legislative process since July, but therein lies the point: how could this possibl[y] get slower?



View Larger Map


Sources: Huffington Post, CBS News, The Hill, Washington Monthly, Google Maps