Bush's big loss.
Busy stuffing envelopes for the Re-elect Stephen Owen campaign, I didn't quite understand exactly what transpired on Friday in the US. The Senate ditched the Patriot Act, or at least the version of the Patriot Act that the White House wants. And because the White House almost always wins authorization for the bills it wants given the way the Senate is stacked, defeating Patriot Reauthorization required a filibuster. All but two Dems together with four Republicans (five, but Frist doesn't count) and Jeffords voted against cloture and, just like that, the Patriot Act is "stalled". In its original form, it's dead. Blink. Blink.
A year ago, I would have said this was impossible, just another obsession for quixotic civil libertarians, an avenue for protest, something with which judges would niggle, the public would never meaningfully engage, and only the ACLU and eccentric mavericks like Russ Feingold and Howard Dean and Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich and a few libertarian mayors and governors would risk seriously opposing. Here's the sum total of what the 2004 Democratic platform had to say on the subject of Patriot and civil liberties:
Guarding liberty. We must always remember that terrorists do not just target our lives; they target our way of life. And so we must be on constant guard not to sacrifice the freedom we are fighting to protect. We will strengthen some provisions of the Patriot Act, like the restrictions on money laundering. And we will change the portions of the Patriot Act that threaten individual rights, such as the library provisions, while still allowing government to take all needed steps to fight terror. Our government should never round up innocent people only because of their religion or ethnicity, and we should never stifle free expression. We believe in an America where freedom is what we fight for – not what we give up.
What was, 18 months ago, a bunch of midly-concerned, stick-to-broad-concepts mush is now a concrete rebellion. Yesterday, Feingold proved just how he'd managed to turn one of his quixotic good-government quests for process accountability into a mainstream liberal demand -- and, better than that, since most mainstream liberal demands still get rejected in GOP Washington, a new mainstream demand with far-reaching appeal and legislative teeth. The White House lost what it won post-911 through hysteria and fear. Russ Feingold is (or deserves to be) a heavy.
I know that Americans are huge civil libertarians, but I still think this is a bigger deal that it's being made out to be, overshadowed as it is by the NYT revelation about Bush's (moronically illegal) warrantless domestic spying program on international correspondance -- which, of course, the Admin specifically left out of its '01 Patriot demands because it would have made Patriot too controversial a lot quicker. Compared to what intelligence agencies do beyond what the Admin asks Congress to authorize them to do, the controversial parts of the Patriot Act are probably small potatoes civil-liberties-violations-wise. Still, the White House just got nailed. The extended grounds for warrants and delayed-warrant-notification provisions, as well as most of the less controversial aspects of Patriot, remain. And some modified, more privacy-friendly version of extentions to the expired parts on wiretapping and records-access will have to pass once the Senate Republicans get through playing games. Frankly, what has always alarmed me about Patriot was not its actual provisions and potential abuses (not that they aren't there; good God are they ever there) so much what it represented as a political document rammed down the throats of legislators and implicitly asserting the untouchability of those who conduct the War on Terror. That political platform -- "On Sept. 11, 2001, our freedom and way of life came under attack by brutal enemies who killed nearly 3,000 innocent Americans. We’re fighting these enemies across the world. Yet in this first war of the 21st century, one of the most critical battlefronts is the home front. And since Sept. 11, we’ve been on the offensive against the terrorists plotting within our borders..." -- is what makes Bush tick. And it's probably gone for good. At some point, the emperor really does have no clothes.
A year ago, I would have said this was impossible, just another obsession for quixotic civil libertarians, an avenue for protest, something with which judges would niggle, the public would never meaningfully engage, and only the ACLU and eccentric mavericks like Russ Feingold and Howard Dean and Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich and a few libertarian mayors and governors would risk seriously opposing. Here's the sum total of what the 2004 Democratic platform had to say on the subject of Patriot and civil liberties:
Guarding liberty. We must always remember that terrorists do not just target our lives; they target our way of life. And so we must be on constant guard not to sacrifice the freedom we are fighting to protect. We will strengthen some provisions of the Patriot Act, like the restrictions on money laundering. And we will change the portions of the Patriot Act that threaten individual rights, such as the library provisions, while still allowing government to take all needed steps to fight terror. Our government should never round up innocent people only because of their religion or ethnicity, and we should never stifle free expression. We believe in an America where freedom is what we fight for – not what we give up.
What was, 18 months ago, a bunch of midly-concerned, stick-to-broad-concepts mush is now a concrete rebellion. Yesterday, Feingold proved just how he'd managed to turn one of his quixotic good-government quests for process accountability into a mainstream liberal demand -- and, better than that, since most mainstream liberal demands still get rejected in GOP Washington, a new mainstream demand with far-reaching appeal and legislative teeth. The White House lost what it won post-911 through hysteria and fear. Russ Feingold is (or deserves to be) a heavy.
I know that Americans are huge civil libertarians, but I still think this is a bigger deal that it's being made out to be, overshadowed as it is by the NYT revelation about Bush's (moronically illegal) warrantless domestic spying program on international correspondance -- which, of course, the Admin specifically left out of its '01 Patriot demands because it would have made Patriot too controversial a lot quicker. Compared to what intelligence agencies do beyond what the Admin asks Congress to authorize them to do, the controversial parts of the Patriot Act are probably small potatoes civil-liberties-violations-wise. Still, the White House just got nailed. The extended grounds for warrants and delayed-warrant-notification provisions, as well as most of the less controversial aspects of Patriot, remain. And some modified, more privacy-friendly version of extentions to the expired parts on wiretapping and records-access will have to pass once the Senate Republicans get through playing games. Frankly, what has always alarmed me about Patriot was not its actual provisions and potential abuses (not that they aren't there; good God are they ever there) so much what it represented as a political document rammed down the throats of legislators and implicitly asserting the untouchability of those who conduct the War on Terror. That political platform -- "On Sept. 11, 2001, our freedom and way of life came under attack by brutal enemies who killed nearly 3,000 innocent Americans. We’re fighting these enemies across the world. Yet in this first war of the 21st century, one of the most critical battlefronts is the home front. And since Sept. 11, we’ve been on the offensive against the terrorists plotting within our borders..." -- is what makes Bush tick. And it's probably gone for good. At some point, the emperor really does have no clothes.
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