But when it comes to the presidential vote . . .

You are still going to vote for a Democrat in '08. It doesn't matter that they just signed away your democratic rights with the renewal of the Patriot Act, you will still think they are better than the Republicans. Silly fucks.

Patriot Act passes Senate with privacy rules added

By Maura Reynolds

Los Angeles Times

WASHINGTON - After months of hard-fought negotiations, the Senate voted overwhelmingly Thursday to renew expiring portions of the Patriot Act after adding new privacy protections to the law spawned after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

By a vote of 89-10, senators voted to make permanent 14 of the 16 provisions originally set to expire at the end of 2005. The two other provisions, which govern secret government records searches, were modified and extended four years.

Many supporters of the bill said it marked an improvement over the original Patriot Act, which was designed to make it easier to thwart new terrorist attacks by expanding the government's investigative powers and breaking down the traditional wall between domestic law enforcement and intelligence agencies.

``The terrorists have not lost the will or the ability to attack us,'' President Bush said from India, praising the Senate's action. ``The Patriot Act is vital to the war on terror and defending our citizens against a ruthless enemy.''

But even many senators who voted for the renewal said that while the bill they approved was better than the original, it still fell short of offering all the civil liberties protections they had sought.

``Our support for the Patriot Act does not mean a blank check for the president,'' said Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. ``But the version of the Patriot Act we will soon reauthorize is a vast improvement over the law we passed hastily in 2001.''

The vote was a prized victory for the Bush administration, which won the anti-terror powers barely six weeks after the attacks on New York and the Pentagon -- only to see its credibility tarnished by recent revelations that it had bypassed laws, including the Patriot Act, to conduct electronic surveillance on people in the United States without obtaining court orders.

``In 2001, we were viciously attacked by terrorists who care nothing for American freedoms and American values,'' said Sen. Russell Feingold, D-Wis., who led a two-month filibuster against the final version of the reauthorization bill. ``Without freedom, we are not America. If we don't preserve our liberties, we cannot win this war, no matter how many terrorists we capture or kill.''

Feingold's filibuster, which was supported by a handful of libertarian-minded Republicans, forced Congress to extend the original act twice while negotiations continued between the two branches of Congress and the White House.

Feingold's chief ally, Sen. Robert C. Byrd, D-W.Va., said the package was not enough to check what he described as a presidential tendency through history of ``always grabbing more power.''