USA PATRIOT Is Here To Stay

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The United States Senate votes 89-10 to renew the USA PATRIOT act. This follows some last-minute scrambling, including a filbuster-softening amendment that contains several points designed to mitigate civil liberties infringements:

Give recipients of court-approved subpoenas for information in terrorism investigations the right to challenge a requirement that they refrain from telling anyone.

Eliminate a requirement that an individual provide the FBI with the name of a lawyer consulted about a National Security Letter, which is a demand for records issued by investigators.

Clarify that most libraries are not subject to demands in those letters for information about terrorism suspects.

As Hafez Assad knew, when only a handful of people vote against you, there's only one more thing you could want. So the names of the Nay voters are:

Akaka (D-HI), Nay
Bingaman (D-NM), Nay
Byrd (D-WV), Nay
Feingold (D-WI), Nay
Leahy (D-VT), Nay
Levin (D-MI), Nay
Harkin (D-IA), Nay
Jeffords (I-VT), Nay
Murray (D-WA), Nay
Wyden (D-OR), Nay

Inouye (D-HI), Not Voting

Full results here. Results of vote on filibuster here.

Last week, John Berlau wrote about scourge-of-meth provisions in the new PATRIOT.