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December 13, 2005BELTWAY BLOGROLL
BillBlast: PATRIOT Act In The Spotlight
The 2001 anti-terrorism law known as the USA PATRIOT Act is in the spotlight again this week -- both in Congress and in the blogosphere. The House-Senate compromise version of legislation to renew expiring provisions of the law is on Congress' agenda, but both lawmakers and bloggers have misgivings about the bill.
Sen. Russell Feingold, D-Wis., is pulling double duty on the PATRIOT Act beat. He is threatening a Senate filibuster of the reauthorization bill, and he is blogging about the measure in a guest stint at TPMCafe.
"Although I was the only senator to vote 'no' on that law back in 2001, I'm not alone anymore," Feingold wrote in his first post. "Countless people across the country, from all over the political spectrum, have stood up and made it clear that they refuse to sacrifice their rights and freedoms for vague assertions that doing so will make us safer."
Both the right-leaning Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit and the solidly left Jeralyn Merritt of TalkLeft are among the bloggers voicing concerns about the bill. Yesterday, they focused their ire on a provision designed to combat the abuse of the prescription drug methamphetamine.
Reynolds said the language is evidence of "mission creep" in the law, adding that "the problem with this is that it has nothing to do with terrorism. Putting it in the PATRIOT Act just reinforces my fears -- present since the beginning -- that [the statute] had more to do with finding an excuse to enact bureaucratic wish lists into law than with protecting us from terrorism."
Merritt's take on the issue: "The only effect this bill will have on those who cook meth is to cause them to steal the pills instead of buy them. ... We need to be vigilant about keeping terror laws and drug laws separate, except in such instances where the two clearly are linked. We already have laws that penalize terrorism and laws that penalize illicit drug activity. There is no need to combine them."
Posted by | 09:23 AM
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