The Associated Press has one of many articles on a new measure being written by Sen. Pat Roberts. The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee is working on a bill that would renew the USA Patriot Act and expand government powers in the name of fighting terrorism, letting the FBI subpoena records without permission from a judge or a grand jury.
The information came from aides who spoke on the condition of anonymity because Roberts has yet to make the bill’s contents public.
Opponents of expanding the Patriot Act said Roberts’s proposal would amount to an expansive wish list for the administration.
Checks & Balances Being Bypassed
The politicians proposing additions to the Patriot Act must not have taken the same social studies classes as the rest of us. How can they keep proposing laws that bypass all the check and balance systems? I see no reason why a few minutes in front of judge to approve a subpeona would harm a terrorism investigation.
Re:Checks & Balances Being Bypassed
These people don’t believe in checks and balances. They also don’t believe that they or anyone they like will ever be the target of the fishing expeditions the lack of judicial review would enable.
No wonder Roberts wants provisions secret until..
voted on. As this part of the article makes clear:
“The aides spoke on the condition of anonymity because Roberts has yet to make the bill’s contents public.”
Aside from the provisions claimed in the article, the ALA Washington office has identified other troubling provisions including:
Apparantly we’ll all be theoretically subject to investigations based solely upon the basis of activities protected by the first amendment to the Constitution. If this isn’t the intention, why strip the provision?
And the plan is for these provisions to be determined behind closed doors by the Sentate Intelligence Committee. The same organization that has a documented and pitiable record of overseeing the intelligence agencies.
A terrible plan, and one that I don’t see how our resident statists who support the President in all things can stomach.
The only good I see out of the current legislation is that GregS and Tomeboy won’t be able to say “What’s your problem? The feds have to go to a court! It’s not like they can open an investigation just based on freedom of speech!”
This latest proposal, done in the dark (again) illustrates what I and many other freedom loving patriots have been saying since October 2001 — the government’s hunger for investigative powers is without limit. They will keep casting their net wider and wider until all activitiy is available to them. History shows they will abuse this history.