When yesterday's hearing on domestic spying began, and right off the bat we learned that a decision had been made not to have Attorney General Gonzales testify under oath, I had a feeling that it was going to be a day of roadblocks and dodging questions - and unfortunately, I was right. While under oath over a year ago, Mr. Gonzales misled the committee by
dismissing my question about warrantless wiretapping as "hypothetical." And now he comes back to the committee for the first time since the spying program was revealed and he gets a pass? Does anyone think that if Attorney General Reno was before the committee in this circumstance, she'd also get a pass? I doubt it. (And if anyone was looking for yet another reason why elections matter - this is it.)
From WMD's to
"Mission Accomplished" to the TALON database, we've heard the President and his administration sound the old `Trust Us' horn, with a wink that says, `Hey, we're at war, we know what's best.' We hear the same thing now with the clearly illegal wiretapping of American citizens without a court warrant. Yesterday's hearing on that issue only further underscored this administration's abuse of power.
With that in mind, we should all remember an earlier power grab - railroading the Patriot Act through Congress. The latest that I'm hearing regarding the reauthorization of the Patriot Act is that the `Trust Us' administration is offering to make a few minor changes, but nothing that addresses most of the major problems we've been trying to fix for the past four years. We need to make clear that's unacceptable and that the administration's efforts to intimidate those who want reasonable changes to the Act won't succeed. Backing down now would be a horrible mistake. We've come too far and fought too hard to give up.
You need to make your voices heard. Tell every member of the Senate not to back down. Speak out against cutting a deal that tries to save face but doesn't save our rights. You've got my commitment that I will strongly oppose, and use every option at my disposal to stop, any deal to reauthorize the Patriot Act that does not protect the rights and freedoms of law-abiding Americans with no connection to terrorism.
Members of both parties, especially Democrats, need to stand tall for the fundamental principles, like freedom, that our country is based on. It's time to stop playing politics with liberty. We can fight terrorism aggressively without infringing on the privacy of ordinary Americans. Please make sure your elected officials know that.