'Patriot Act' Fight A Brewin'

The House failed to pass an extension of provisions of the Patriot Act this week. House leaders put the bill on the House Suspension Calendar which requires a 2/3rds vote to pass and forecloses the opportunity for amendments to the bill. Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) has pledged to slow down the legislation in the Senate.

Senator Paul feels so strongly about this issue, he has put out a YouTube video describing in great detail why he opposes the continuation of this Act.

This fight is going to play out over the next two weeks in the House and Senate. Conservatives should not rubber stamp this Bush era power in the name of anti-terrorism, because the complex provisions of the Patriot Act deserve a full and fair national debate. The federal government already has extra-ordinary powers to monitor behavior without the Patriot Act, Americans need to give expressed consent to any further authorization of these powers to comply with the 4th Amendment to the Constitution.

Senator Paul argues that the Patriot Act gives the government too much power to search citizen’s without due process of law.

My main objection to the Patriot Act is that searches that normally require a judge’s warrant are performed with an FBI Agent’s letter, a National Security Letter. I object to these warrant-less searches being performed on U.S. citizens. I object to the 200 thousand NSL searches that have been performed without a judge’s warrant. I object to over 2 million searches of bank records, called suspicious activity reports that have been performed on U.S. citizens without a judge’s warrant.

The United States Government derives power from the people and operates with the consent of the governed. It is not the other way around. Some would have you believe that all U.S. Citizens are guilty until proven innocent and should be subject to government monitoring. That is not what our Founders thought.

John Adams, our nation’s second President and American Revolutionary, wrote in 1765 in “Dissertation on the Cannon and Feudal Law.”

The jaws of power are always open to devour, and her arm is aways stretched out, if possible, to destroy the freedom of thinking, speaking, and writing.

Samuel Adams, a Founding Father and participant in the Boston Tea Party, believed that freedom is a natural right of men and argued this in “The Rights of the Colonists,” report transmitted to the Boston Town Meeting on November 20, 1772.

Among the natural rights of the Colonists are these: First, a right to life; Secondly, to liberty; Thirdly, to property; together with the right to support and defend them in the best manner they can.

Senator Paul is fighting to preserve this natural right of citizens. Adams went on to argue that “every natural right not expressly given up, or, from the nature of a social compact, necessarily ceded, remains.” Senator Paul is upset that this natural right is being ceded without the consent of the people.

That being said, it is important to keep up with new technology and for the federal government to have proper national security tools to prevent terrorism. Yet those tools should not infringe on due process rights of all Americans. If an individual is not a citizen, then they should not be considered part of the body politic that must consent to a continuation of the Patriot Act.

Clearly there are reasonable provisions in the Patriot Act, but some are not reasonable. Without getting into a detailed description of every provision, it is important to note that the Congress is trying to pass this without sufficient debate. The House tried to pass it on the Suspension Calendar and the Senate is in the process of getting a bill on the Senate floor without hearings, nor any committee process. That is not fair.

Whatever you think of the Patriot Act and the component parts of the Act, all should agree that this issue deserves a national debate.

Once the House sends a reauthorization to the Senate, expect fireworks from one Republican constitutional conservative — Senator Rand Paul.