House Approves Patriot Act Extension
December 14, 2005
The House has approved extensions to the Patriot Act. The Patriot Act is not one of those pieces of legislation that is just there to make Congress look like they are “earning” their pay. It is actually the most sinister act of the Bush administration. I said it. To me, this is worse than the Iraq war, worse than G.W.’s vacations, worse than his Social Security plan, worse than his “war-time” tax cuts, worse than it all.
This is arguably the largest infringement on civil liberties since the Jim Crow laws of the late 1800s. My feelings for this are too many to enumerate here, but they can be summed up quite simply and concisely.
If a piece of legislation is positive and has merit, why would we set a sunset to provisions of that legislation? This works for both sides of the argument. If the Voting Rights Act of 1965* was legitimate and indicative of how the people and the government truly felt, why did it have an expiration date? Laws are not perishable goods - well, good ones should not be. The only reason you enact something temporarily is because you do not totally agree with or like it and are pandering to some other party, or that you know it is wrong. The Voting Rights Act is in the “pandering” bucket. The Patriot Act is in the “wrong” bucket.
* Please note that the Voting Rights Act of 1965 does have certain important provisions that will need to be extended/made permanent over the next few years. However, contrary to popular opinion, even in the relatively unlikely event that those specific provisions are not extended, people will not lose their right to vote as a result. I hate when people don’t do their homework. SuperSpades cannot be ignorant.
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