My piece on the efforts of a small bipartisan group of senators to add some small changes to the PATRIOT Act is up:
The Senate's small civil libertarian-friendly wing failed to reform the PATRIOT Act this time around, but it will have more opportunities to test its influence and sustainability in the near future. Next year, the 2008 FISA Amendments Act, which gave the government more leeway to conduct massive surveillance with minimal judicial review, will sunset. When then-candidate Barack Obama abandoned his prior criticism of the Bush administration and supported the bill, it was his first substantial betrayal of his civil-libertarian supporters, one that foreshadowed their disappointment with his failure to meaningfully depart from Bush-era national-security policies as president.
"It's not so simple that you can just say that I'm either against terrorism, or I'm going to let terrorists run wild and take over the country," Paul said during his floor speech on Monday. "You can be opposed to terrorists. You can go after terrorists. We can go after murderers, and rapists, and people who commit crimes. But we can do it with a process that protects the innocent."
Of course, Congress will be discussing the FISA Amendments Act around election season 2012, because it sunsets in December of that year. So grandstanding and presidential politics will create a pretty serious headwind. If Sens. Patrick Leahy and Rand Paul's amendment had been adopted, however, it would have pushed the sunset back further, ensuring that the first opportunity to reform the bill wouldn't become such a juicy target for "war on terror" demagoguery. Instead Democrats will likely find themselves again on the defensive, particularly given the president's old statements on the subject.
