Adam Serwer says that Democrats have dropped the ball on reforming Bush-era civil-liberties abuses:
For a minute, it almost looked like Democrats were going to put up a fight on the PATRIOT Act as it came up for reauthorization. With a majority in Congress, a clear list of reforms set out by Russ Feingold and six other Democrats in the JUSTICE Act, and a president who had presented himself as a friend to civil libertarians, it certainly seemed possible.
In late September, during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Sen. Al Franken of Minnesota made a great show of questioning whether the roving wiretap provisions of the PATRIOT Act were constitutional. He read the Fourth Amendment, which guards against unreasonable search and seizure, aloud to a stunned Assistant Attorney General David Kris. Franken noted that the amendment contains “pretty explicit language” about such intrusions and asked Kris whether he thought the roving wiretap provision fit that standard.
