Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) could barely conceal his anger.
"The Patriot Act expires on December 31, but the terrorist threat does not," he told reporters at the Capitol yesterday. "Those on the Senate floor who are filibustering the Patriot Act are killing the Patriot Act." There was just one problem. Well, four problems, actually. Four of the 46 senators using the delaying tactic to thwart the USA Patriot Act renewal are members of Frist's party. It is a pesky, irritating fact for Republicans who are eager to portray the impasse as Democratic obstructionism, and a ready-made rejoinder for Democrats expecting campaign attacks on the issue in 2006 and 2008.
The four Republican rebels -- Larry E. Craig (Idaho), Chuck Hagel (Neb.), John E. Sununu (N.H.) and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) -- have joined all but two Senate Democrats in arguing that more civil liberties safeguards need to be added to the proposed renewal of the Patriot Act. The law makes it easier for FBI agents to monitor phone calls, search homes and obtain business records of terrorism suspects. The four stand calmly at the center of a political storm that soon will determine whether the law, enacted soon after the 2001 terrorist attacks, is renewed in a modified form or allowed to expire in 11 days.
The House passed the Patriot Act renewal Dec. 14, but two days later the four Republicans joined most Democrats in the Senate in blocking action on the bill. The four Republicans' concerns about the proposed Patriot Act renewal are basically the same as those of most Senate Democrats. They say the bill is slanted too heavily in the government's favor when it comes to letting targeted people challenge national security letters and special subpoenas that give the FBI substantial latitude in deciding what records should be surrendered. The targeted people should have a greater ability to challenge such subpoenas and require the government to show why it thinks the items being sought are connected to possible terrorism, the Republicans contend. Their Republican colleagues try to look the other way, but Democrats are delighted to have some bipartisan cover. "In a full-court press by the White House to demonize Democrats, it's great to see we've got at least four Republican profiles in courage," said Jim Manley, spokesman for Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.).
It would be easier for GOP leaders to shrug off the mini-rebellion if it came from the well-known moderates of Maine and Rhode Island who often defy the party on fiscal and social issues. Instead, the four could star in a "Big Tent" ad proclaiming the Republican Party's diversity. They include a dyed-in-the-wool conservative (Craig), a rising star and presidential aspirant (Hagel), and two second-generation Republican achievers (Murkowski and Sununu). Murkowski, who inherited her seat from her father, said she has received angry phone calls and e-mails from non-Alaskans. "But I've got to listen to my constituents first," she said, and they have been "very supportive." White House officials, she said, "have left me alone," as have most fellow GOP senators. "I have not had people hanging around me asking me if I've changed my mind," she said. (Hagel appears equally sanguine. "I took an oath of office to the Constitution, I didn't take an oath of office to my party or my president," he recently told reporters.)
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/20/AR2005122001488.html
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