House Abandons Privacy Protections, Approves PATRIOT Act

news.antiwar.com...

The House of Representatives narrowly averted allowing the US Patriot Act to expire, abandoning all the proposed privacy provisions to the bill and approving it exactly as worded by the Senate in a vote earlier this week. Parts of Patriot Act would have expired Sunday, but passed through the Senate without debate.

The vote, incredibly enough titled the “Medicare Physician Payment Reform Act,” passed 315-97. The bill was so named because Senate Democrats inserted the Patriot Act’s extension into a Medicare reform bill.

Three sections of the Patriot Act were to “sunset” this year, including the roving wiretap provision, the library records seizure provision, and the “lone wolf” provision, which permitted surveillance against possible terrorists even if there was no evidence tying them to any terror organization.

The Obama Administration had expressed concern about the addition of civil rights protections to the bill, but said they would consider them so long as they didn’t weaken the president’s powers. In the end such consideration will be unneccesary, because the neither the House nor the Senate saw fit to include any protections at all.

what kind of sleazy a$$ back door legislation is this...
VOTE INDEPENDENT IN 2010/2012 republicans and democrats are worthless pawns. not that independents cant be... ugh... revolution is in the air..

I attempted to send an email message to the 'so called Progressives' that actually voted in favor of this extension and how convenient that they would not accept any emails from outside their congressional districts.
irregulartimes.com...
If anyone lives inside a congressional district with a progressive I encourage you to send them this message

Dear Congressman.
There was a vote today in the House of Representatives on extending the provisions of the Patriot Act that infringe upon Americans civil liberties that you swore to uphold. As expected the Republicans voted heavily to continue with these violations but when I saw members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus voted for the re-enactment of these measures I was astonished. Not only did you betray the principles of your platform which swore to repeal the Sunshine Clause of the USA Patriot Act you went ahead and voted in favor of extending these violations. Not only did you vote against your platform, but you voted against the very constituents that elected you to abolish the Sunshine Clause! This is an absolute outrage, I have trusted the Progressives to always uphold Americans civil liberties but now I cannot trust you and several other members of the CPC. None of the progressives have openly stated that they have voted for this extension because you and they are ashamed, as you should be.
- Very Angry American!

[edit on 2/26/10 by Misoir]

[edit on 2/26/10 by Misoir]

Get this patriot act rubbish out of my Americaz!

Christ sakes Dems, this is why I supported you, to remove this nazi bullocks.

-removes a star from Obama's head-

reply to post by SaturnFX


Remove a star? How about remove his head and of all the others who are driving this world to doom.

reply to post by broli


True but why make it any old boring execution. We could line them up and use the JFK rifle/rifles? on them. Or we could show them how to save a buck, line them up and use 1 25MM on them, much quicker and effective than anything DC could do. Hell it could probably turn a hefty profit for the people, I'm sure you could sell off the executioner spots, it's not like there wouldn't be millions of takers.

[edit on 26-2-2010 by Silverado292]

If knowledge is power and power is [success] and control, than my question is this:

If you have it than why would you voluntarily give it back?

Seriously, why would you?



/Not saying that I believe it to be right, but we the people let them do it.







[edit on 26-2-2010 by LadySkadi]

reply to post by LadySkadi


Why indeed?
The only reason I can think of is that "voluntarily giving" the power back is definitely more healthy than having "we the people" forcefully take it back.
Seems like quite a few members are in favor of the latter.