Right all along, unfortunately: the "Chicken Littles" win the civil liberties debate.

AuthorWeigel, David
PositionColumn

ATTORNEY GENERAL ALBERTO Gonzales and Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Robert Mueller spent much of March doing something neither man was used to doing: apologizing. On March 10, Mueller admitted that the agency hadn't told the truth about its uses of PATRIOT Act powers to investigate Americans, admitting that nearly 50,000 privacy-busting "National Security Letters" had been sent in 2005 instead of the 30,000 Congress had been told of. Three days later, Gonzales walked the same plank to confess that the Department of Justice may have lied to Congress about the reasons why eight U.S. Attorneys had been dismissed and replaced with less-experienced drones who'd be more willing to investigate Democrats.

Six and a half years earlier, Cassandras who warned about abuses like these couldn't get a hearing in Washington. Only one U.S. senator, the Wisconsin Democrat Russ Feingold, opposed the PATRIOT Act in October 2001. Only 47 senators voted against the White House's drive to close debate on PATRIOT Act reauthorization on December 16, 2005--enough to delay the vote, but not enough to force major changes. But on March 20, 2007, 94 senators voted to repeal the PATRIOT provision that let the Department of Justice fire U.S. attorneys and replace them without new nomination hearings.

In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, citizens and legislators alike were quick to go along with the idea that government needed sweeping new powers--and less oversight--if it was going to defend us against terrorism. It was this idea that gave us Gitmo, warrantless wiretaps, the PATRIOT Act, and the Department of Homeland Security. The idea faced critics from the start, but for a long time, most of Congress was willing to meet those criticisms with faith: faith in the president, faith in legal authorities, faith in agents wielding pumped-up powers in the field.

That first, lopsided Senate battle over the PATRIOT Act set the tone. The administration mollified skeptical U.S. senators with small changes to a bill that began as a K-Tel compilation of new state powers: The attorney general would still be allowed to seize education records, for example, but now he was required to present some reasons for doing so. Feingold, who proposed several doomed amendments to the law, was the only senator to break faith with the parties and vote against the entire bill.

"I came to feel that the administration's demand for haste was inappropriate; indeed, it was dangerous," Feingold...

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