Renew Patriot Act - Bush to Congress

President Bush has urged Congress to renew portions of the Patriot Act, passed in haste post-9/11, that are scheduled to sunset at the end of 2005. Tuesday, the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee voted 11-4 in a closed door session to renew the 16 sections scheduled to sunset. They also expanded the act, allowing the FBI to bypass a judge when obtaining some personal records in terrorism cases; the FBI could also monitor mail. Ranking Democrat Jay Rockefeller (D-W.VA) supported the measure. Grassroots opposition is widespread: five states and about 380 communities in 43 states have gone on record opposing all or parts of the Act.

The bill must also pass the Senate Judiciary Committee. The President insists that the Patriot Act is necessary to protect the nation against domestic terrorists. Civil libertarians, on the other hand, worry that the first bill went too far.

Grassroots opposition is widespread and not confined to the nation's "blue" coasts. For example, Montana, a red state that voted 3-2 for Bush in 2004 is the only state west of the Mississippi River that has a formal resolution opposing the Act.

Illustrating the adage that politics makes strange bedfellows, both the American Civil Liberties Union ( ACLU - left) and the American Conservative Union (ACU - right) oppose extension.

See Boston Globe, Christian Science Monitor, Federalist Patriot, Homefront Confidential, Lufkiin (TX) Daily News, Preserving Life & Liberty (DOJ), Slate, VOA