Did you know? The overwhelming majority of Senators who voted for the Patriot Act never actually read it.
Takeaways

Probably the best example of choosing a name in the past decade was the choice of giving a certain piece of Congressional legislation the name Patriot Act. After all, what kind of person would take issue with something that was so clearly designed in the best interests of America? The very word patriot can't help but bring up images of our founding fathers forming an experiment in government the likes of which was nowhere else to be contemplated at the time. Or else, images of minutemen and other members of the first ragtag collection of colonial soldiers fighting bravely for the freedom from oppression of the British monarchy.

Patriot Act. It just sounds so…beyond reproach.

The actual Patriot Act that Congress supposedly looked over before agreeing it was a good thing to vote into law consisted of 326 pages of extremely small print. I say supposedly because, as we know now, the overwhelming majority of those who voted this bill into law admit that they hadn't read it. In fact, they were forced to admit that they rarely read any bill completely; instead, they rely upon underlings to read through the often tedious and incomprehensible gobbledygook that are the bills presented to the US Congress. These underlings then write very concise synopses of the bills which our Congressmen and Senators then read before debating and voting.

Sometimes. Sometimes they don't even read the synopses, but just get a watered-down headline-news kind of verbal description.

Now, I understand there are a tremendous amount of bills that get introduced in Congress every year and even I don't expect every Congressman and Senator to actually read every word of every one of them. But, well, call me naïve if you must, but I think one of the bills that should get read very closely is any bill that threatens the very rights our original patriots fought so hard to ensure. You know, little things like freedom of speech, freedom from unlawful search and seizure, the right to a speedy trial. All those niggling little laws that make up the sometimes incredibly inconvenient document I like to call The Bill of Rights.

The Patriot Act, as I hope you'll recall, came about as a result of the 9/11 attacks. Rightfully so, there was a call for action to protect us against this kind of devastating attack again. For the last time in American history since 9/11, this country was in almost unanimous agreement on something. We needed to protect ourselves. The Bush administration had been asleep at the wheel for nine months and apparently had not the slightest indication that this plot was afoot. Because it was unpatriotic at the time to throw out the accusation that Bush had failed miserably in his first major crisis, because it was agreed that this was the time for unity, because we were all afraid that it could happen again any moment, we asked our leaders to act and to act quickly.

What they came up with was a bill that basically permitted the federal government to expand the limits of both telephone and internet surveillance, to loosen the laws against wiretapping citizens, to allow a person's library borrowings and video rentals to be requested without their permission, to make it easier for the feds to obtain previously confidential financial and medical records.

Without any public debate or hearings, the Patriot Act passed nearly unanimously in the Senate by a vote of 98-1. Only Sen. Russell Feingold voted against it and he was excoriated for having the temerity to suggest openly that there are parts of this law that had absolutely no bearing whatever on fighting against a possible terrorist attack.

Eventually, the Patriot Act was strengthened by a new definition of new crime called "domestic terrorism." What was this definition of this new crime? Domestic terrorism was "any action that endangers human life or is a violation of any federal or state law." Needless to say, this intentionally vague description allows for unbelievable latitude in describing criminal behavior as "terrorism." Remember that one Senator who questioned whether the Patriot Act might not just be an excuse to widen investigations into other actions under the aegis of suspected terrorism? Well, perhaps Feingold was on to something. One thing is for sure, the Patriot Act has been used in order to justify investigations and the restriction of previously protected civil rights of suspects-suspects, remember-in crimes that have no precedent attached to them regarding terrorist activity. Could it be that former Attorney General John Ashcroft just felt that current laws didn't give him enough freedom to investigate the way he thought he should and so therefore he thought it would just be a lot easier to roll these types of crimes over into a wide umbrella of crimes that allowed for the restriction of civil liberties during the investigative phase?

You hear a lot of criticism of the Patriot Act, but really what's all the fuss about? After all, isn't protecting the country from another 9/11 all the justification that is needed for rolling back the rights of criminals? And, really, what rights are being violated anyway?

Another thing we've been hearing a lot about recently are wiretaps conducted by the federal government, with the President's knowledge and approval. Some question why he's engaged in probably illegal wiretapping when the Patriot Act itself gave him far more leeway than any other President has ever had. Sec. 206 of the Patriot Act allows one wiretap authorization to cover multiple devices. For instance, instead of getting separate court orders to wiretap someone's home phone, someone's cell phone, someone's computer, now just one court order covers everything. Now, there is no denying this would have been really helpful if it had been applied to one of those hijackers. But let's say you happened to be friends with one of those hijackers and were in complete ignorance of what they were really doing. Heck, let's say you weren't friends, let's just say your phone number was one digit off the number of one of their friends. A suspected terrorist calls your number by mistake, doesn't leave a message or anything, but just a record of a call to you by a terrorist. Now, guess who the federal government-in all their frightening paranoia-suspects may be involved in some way. Now guess whose home phone, cell phone, computer and business phone are being wiretapped? Think it can't happen? Now who's being naïve Kay?

One of the causes of the level of devastation associated with the collapse of the World Trade Center was the lack of communication between agencies. Therefore, sharing information became a top priority. Hence, Sections 203 B and D of the Patriot Act, which allows information from criminal probes to be shared with intelligence agencies and other parts of the government. This has the potential to be a good thing. After all, the childish turf wars between the CIA, the FBI, the ATF and other law enforcement agencies has led to countless criminals slipping through the cracks. But here's the problem. Privacy. Judge Robert Bork and newly minted Supreme Court Justice Alito may not believe that Americans have a right to privacy, but every other semi-intelligent human being alive knows that we do. With the sharing of information taking place, an enormously detailed database of information is being compiled on people who have not the slightest connection with suspected terrorists.

As it stands now, any information gathered about anybody who is under investigation can be shared. Investigators don't have to explain how the suspect might be related to terrorist activities. In fact, investigators are not in any way limited to sharing information that relates strictly to terrorism. Remember, this is the vaunted Patriot Act. This is the document mean to protect us from terrorists. So why is information being shared among agencies and a huge database of information being compiled on people who aren't even being investigated under the most tenuous of connections?

Section 213 allows "Sneak and peek" search warrants, which let authorities search a home or business without immediately notifying the target of a probe. Again, even though the Patriot Act is supposed to target suspected terrorists, due to Ashcroft's ridiculous definition of domestic terrorism, pretty much anyone anywhere is subject to coming home one day to find the Feds snooping through their stuff.

In reference to section 213 of the "Patriot Act," I'd like to quote from something I like to call the Original Patriot Act:

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

That's a quote from an increasingly meaningless document called the United States Constitution. It is the 4th Amendment, the 4th Bill of Rights. Seems that it was pretty important to the founding fathers of this country that people should be secure in their houses, and not afraid that the government agents could burst in and snoop around anytime they wanted and without telling the inhabitants. By the way, doesn't that also sound suspiciously like a Constitutional guarantee of privacy? Take that Bork and Scalia and Thomas and Alito and Roberts!

The Patriot Act is still pretty popular among most Americans. Obviously, GOP Congressman have no trouble voting for its extension, though it's more than just a little troubling that Democrats seem to have no trouble either. In fact, the Patriot Act has done more to restrict the Constitutionally-guaranteed civil liberties of Americans more than anything in the history of this country. Only during the time of the Civil War when Pres. Abraham Lincoln was struggling to keep this very country together have we been closer to having our basic rights taken away from us. Back then it was deemed necessary to save the union. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't, but at least it worked.

Now we have a President and a Congress telling us that our Constitutional guarantees of civil liberties are a luxury we can no longer afford because we're fighting a war. A war declared against an abstract noun! The Patriot Act is in place because of the war on terrorism, not the war on Iraq. (Which, by the way, since the President won't inform you of this fact, was a country that had absolutely no connection at all with 9/11.)

Think about it. There you are walking down the street in the morning and your cell phone rings. You pick it up and the person on the other end hangs up. In some little cubicle somewhere, that phone call was traced and some investigator wants to know why a suspected terrorist is placing a phone call to you. He comes to investigate you and you say it must have been a wrong number. But while he's in your house or at your work, he sees that you maybe have an anti-war poster up or your kid walks through wearing an anti-Bush shirt. You think he's going to accept your answer of a wrong number and walk away happy?

It's a far-out scenario, sure. A wrong number and an anti-war poster and the next think you know your every conversation is being recorded and personal details of your life are being entered into a nationwide database. And then one day you come home to find people hired by people appointed by George W. Bush-remember Michael Brown?-inside your house, which you aren't allowed to go into. Sound farfetched? Orwellian? Paranoid?

Tell that to Steve Kurtz. Kurtz teaches art at NYU at Buffalo. After his wife died of a cardiac arrest, the Feds got suspicious of his art supplies. He was detained because it was suspected that his art supplies could be used to make bioterrorist weapons. While he sat in jail, every inch of his house was gone over with a fine-toothed comb, his computers were impounded, his wife's corpse was investigated, and eventually his house was condemned by the Buffalo Health Department. Later it was discovered that not only was the material that set off this alarm not being used for to make weapons, it wasn't even possible to use the material to make weapons.

Perhaps Democrat lawmakers and millions more Americans might be more resistant to the Patriot Act were it called by what it really is: The Act to Restrict Civil Liberties in the Pursuit of Suspects Possibly Engaged in Acts that Bear a Tenuous Relationship to Terrorism. The Patriot Act has succeeded not because of what it does, but because of what it's called. But, in truth, there is nothing patriotic about it. This country was founded by people who saw the danger of overextending the right of the government to restrict civil liberties. While people wearing anti-war shirts and holding up anti-Bush signs are arrested or shipped off somewhere out of sight of the media's cameras, the founders of our government wanted to ensure that everybody had the same rights. After all, freedom is just privilege extended if not enjoyed by all, to quote Billy Bragg. Just as people have the right to express their misguided approval of Pres. Bush without fear of arrest or retribution, so should people who look at the rolling back of our rights have the right to express themselves.

Do we need something like the Patriot Act to protect against the occurrence of another 9/11? Obviously, the need to fully investivate suspected terrorists is necessary and, under certain conditions, civil rights have to be violated. But those conditions were already in place. 9/11 could have been avoided under the conditions that existed before 9/11. If the Bush administration had been paying attention, that is. After all, here were a dozen foreigners who were learning to fly a plane, but not learning to land it. Shouldn't that have been a red flag right there? Nothing within the Patriot Act would have been helped avoid 9/11. If only someone had actually been paying attention to what was going, the laws in place were already more than adequate enough to have allowed court orderered wiretaps and other methods of surveillance. Again: If would go back in time and put the Patriot Act into place on inauguration day 2001, there is nothing in there that would have meant the difference between 9/11 taking place and not taking place.

The Constitution doesn't give everybody the right to keep the FBI out of their house. Look at it again: All that is needed to allow a search is probable cause. Just the very fact that these guys weren't learning how to land a plane justifies as probable cause. The laws that could have stopped 9/11 from taking place were already in place. The only problem is that nobody was carrying them out. The only difference the Patriot Act makes is that now millions of people who have nothing to do with terrorism are open game. Thousands of houses will be invaded and searched and the owners may never even know. The FBI isn't required to tell them that their house was searched either before or after it takes place.

Civil liberties are exactly what the patriots were fighting for. To call this rag the Patriot Act is a slap in the face to Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, John Hancock and every poor kid who died during the Revolutionary War. Face it: America is now in the position of England during the late 1700s and George W. Bush is the modern day King George III. If Jefferson, Franklin and Hancock were alive today, they'd be in jail. Because Bush and his hooligans would find the questions they would be asking too dangerous to allow to exist.