Get FISA Right

By: Harry Waisbren

The Patriot Act Reauthorization has passed the Senate Judiciary Committee, 11-8, and is now moving on to the full Senate. There were certainly many disappointing aspects of the hearing, leading Julian Sanchez of the CATO institute at one point to describe–hopefully in jest–that his soul was slowly dying and Marcy Wheeler to decry the “BullSHIT!!!”

There were, however, some positive developments, including a passed amendment from Sen. Feingold requiring DOJ to discard illegally collected information from National Security Letters. Sen. Specter also voted the right way each and every time, and seems to be becoming an increasingly integral civil liberties advocate—something that is important regardless of how you feel about his upcoming primary with congressman Joe Sestak.

We’ll have much more to say about all of this soon of course. For now, check out our post-hearing Tweeting points, we’ll continue to relay any new developments, and a rounding thank you to everyone who joined in at our Patriot Act Action Hub!

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 8th, 2009 at 1:03 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.