Renewal Reduces Oversight

The House has just voted to extend the Patriot Act. I'm sure the Senate will follow suit, and Smirk will, of course, sign it. It bothers me that the whole package of legislation is being renewed with little or no opposition, but it also bothers me that nearly all of the provisions are being renewed without sunset provisions. This removes any responsibility for oversight on the part of Congress. To me, that means Congress is willing to abandon its constitutional, ethical, moral, and historical responsibility to act as a check and balance on the system as the Framers of the Constitution intended.

The claim right now made by the folks at Justice is that there have been negligible problems, and that in itself "proves" that the Patriot Act is just fine and dandy. But how many times have you seen others (or yourself!) been on their best behavior at the outset of something (a relationship, a job, a new school, etc.), only later to reveal their worst side? Right now, with Congress acting as the "parent" by setting boundaries through the sunset provisions, it's very easy for our gummint cops such as the FBI and our prosecutors at DOJ to be on their very best behavior-- good little boys and girls. Once there are no restrictions, once "daddy" Congress is out of the way, see the angels start acting like hooligans.

This may seem cynical and pessimistic, but given past offenses such as COINTELPRO (yeah, yeah, I know-- I'm repeating myself again and again...) and more recent disturbing incidents such as the ones I've outlined in my blog the last couple of weeks, I think I'd rather err on the side of pessimism.

Lest you think the Patriot Act is benign and doesn't apply to you, check out this dissection of some of the scarier parts of the Patriot act over at Daily Kos. For those of you who are moderates or lean right, yeah, Daily Kos is a progressive site-- get over it. Something like the Patriot Act doesn't know any boundaries such as left and right, and could be manipulated by whoever's in power. So it really concerns all of us, not just some of us. Opposition to the Patriot Act has come from all quarters-- even Bob Barr, the former Republican Congressman from Georgia, is on record against parts of the Patriot Act.

On another political blog, The Brad Blog, is some information about John Conyers' opposition to the Patriot Act, which I think is worth a look. It's nice to know that even though they're politically on opposite sides of the aisle, Barr and Conyers care enough to question what's happening. Unfortunately, the rest of Congress has, through renewal, reduced oversight of our gummint. Take it from me, that's never good.