Senate votes to extend Patriot Act

Senators vote overwhelmingly to extend the anti-terrorism law for four years despite objections of a coalition of conservatives and liberals. The House is expected to follow suit.

Reporting From Washington — The Senate voted overwhelmingly on Monday to extend expiring provisions of the Patriot Act for four years despite objections of a coalition of conservatives and liberals.

Because of the Obama administration's strong support for the anti-terrorism law, a bipartisan majority in both the House and Senate is expected to finish the legislation this week, keeping the provisions in force. They are scheduled to expire on Friday.

"It is essential to avoid any hiatus in these critical authorities," the White House said in a statement.

Read more: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-patriot-act-20110524,0,7552843.story?track=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+latimes%2Fnews%2Fnationworld%2Fnation+%28L.A.+Times+-+National+News%29

let me extend my condolences to you all.

Good luck, America. You'll need it.

completely, utterly worthless.

well, I mean, if we're talking "change for the better."

For the other kind, I guess they're pretty good.

way over 50% of the Dems voted yes.

Source: http://senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=112&session=1&vote=00075

Edit: I can't believe Franken voted yes.

How much of our party has become Republican?
It seems like both houses and the presidency are still Republican (in nature if not proclamation)

on behavior which had previously correlated with Democrats.

It's a public relations puppet show and the corporations are pulling the strings.

Now, we can't expect to receive an honest service, and it's harder to sue for fraud, thanks to the SCOTUS.

that words like Democrat and Republican are nothing more than ideological symbols of which many power hungry character disordered individuals hide behind.

While studying the psychology of politics, I found that words like liberal and conservative are much more useful at predicting what politicians, as well as their collective followers, are going to do; with great accuracy.

It's a sad fact, but our government is run by an overwhelming majority of conservatives and conservative extremist, although there is a very small minority of liberals who have been marginalized to little or no affect.

This is why so many elected Democrats can act like Republicans and get away with it, and the majority of voters can't figure out why we are having so many problems. It's because they only see the symbols of ideology and not the character disorders that are typical of conservatives in both parties.

They spread delusional worldviews, false realities, fear, and insane policies like a pathological disease. The result is social upheavals, unemployment, hysteria, broken families, predatory looting, bankrupt economies, lose of liberty, war, etc...

And like a snowball headed for hell, someone like Hitler comes along and promises to fix it, and the cycle of history repeats itself over and over again...

Feinstein I can believe. Boxer I am surprised and disappointed in. WTF.

seems like now would've been a good time to get rid of this travesty of an act with OBL at the bottom of the sea. :argh:

Wish there were some senators with the courage to justify voting against the extensions.

Business As Usual

Even in the first and most troublesome Patriot Act, Feingold, the only Senator who voted against it said that he was about 80% of it ... but the remainder troubled him enough to vote against it. In 2006, much, but not all of that remaining 20% bad, was fixed.

Here, the nos are pretty mixed - Sanders, the left most member of the Senate, Merkley, and .. conservative Democrats Baucus and Beiglish - and Republicans like Rand Paul??

I suspect that the current bill is similar - or better than the 2006 bill. I haven't had the time to read much on it.