U S Senate Extends Patriot Act in Close Vote

The US Senate has voted 73 to 72 to extend the three key provisions of the Patriot Act before it expires tonight at midnight. I wonder who the key vote was. The House, with it’s Republican majority is expected to act on the bill immediately and send it to the President’s desk for signature. One provision allows wire taps without a warrant. Another allows the ransacking of business records, and the third provision has to do with “lone wolf” terrorists. It’s what the American People seem perfectly happy with. According to the guy now speaking on C-Span, “roving wiretaps” have been used in drug cases since 1986. However I imagine that is with a warrant. In February the extension of ninety days was voted on. Now they want to extend these provisions for four years. They want to extend the definition of a “foreign power” to a “lone wolf” terrorist in this country. There is “no particularity” in the business and library records provision of the bill. The democratic speaker doesn’t believe sufficient review hearings have been carried out, and suggests that they do before the bill is extended. Rand Paul is speaking right now making an awful lot of good points about “probable cause”. The standard now is “relivence” , which could mean anything. If your bank doesn’t report to the government if you conduct a transaction of over five thousand dollars, they will be in trouble. People can look at your VISA card and get a monthly profile of your expenses, like if you are seeing a psychiatrist. He just quoted Benjamin Franklin who said “He would sacrifice your civil liberties for the sakes of security will end up getting neither”. “If the government were comprised of angels, we wouldn’t need the fourth amendment”. But on the other hand should we elect a man who turns out to be a despot, we could all be in big trouble. When the patriot act was first passed apparently few congressmen read the full bill. This is a dangerous precedent for such radical legislation. It’s so seldom these days that you actually hear a debate on C-Span that this is refreshing.

Tim Pawlenty busted up a sweetheart deal where bus drivers had to only work fifteen years to get life long health care that the tax payers pay for. Pawlendy has scaled back pensions of state workers so that they conform more realistically to actuarial tables. He says if he’s president he’ll only replace one government worker for every two that retire. I agree with him that Obama did not “fix the system” in terms of the fundamental problem of cost containment. We still have the looming problem of increasing the debt ceiling for the nation. I don’t need to remind you of the economic ramifications if we don’t. Yesterday President Clinton was whispering in Paul Ryan’s ears telling him to compromise and get the problem of medicare taken care of. I think even Bill Clinton sees the hand writing on the wall with this one. Pawlenty plans to put out his own medi-care reform plan very soon. I get the feeling that his plan will be even more radical than the one by Paul Ryan. Tim Pawlenty has traveled extensively all over the mideast. He goes along with the general idea of a troop draw-down in Iraq and Afghanistan. Pwelente also says there may be weapons systems that we don’t need.

In soap land Raphael broke an antique liquor canister on purpose and then left. He’s playing a dangerous game and didn’t hold the bluff very well. Elvis wants to bump him off altogether to insure that there are no further “complications”. Nicole and Taylor are having a cat fight. I haven’t seen Carley lately when she wasn’t spaced out.

Yesterday that guy that shot Gabriel Gifford was declared incompetent to stand trial. He had an insane outburst in court that some think was staged. Obviously to carry out such a cold blooded crime took a lot of volitional planning. The experts will be evaluating him for the next couple months. Just throw him in prison right now.

They think they caught the guy who beat up that SF Giants fan but they are stalling on the details of the line-up. If it isn’t the guy it’ll be a bummer all around. One suspect is still at large. I just hope they don’t decide to eliminate beer sales altogether. Sometimes, things can be spoiled by one bad apple.

The founder of Face Book, a company that has only been around since 2004, now is granting hundred thousand scholarships to anyone who fancies themselves an inventor and wants to skip college. College will continue to be less and less worth it as debts in excess of fifty thousand dollars become common, and the job situation deteriorates.

Roselyn Carter was talking about “meals on wheels”. I can’t help but think of that cat and mouse gag where a cat was asked what heaven would be like for them and they mostly said “It’s a place where I can catch all the mice I can eat”. And the mice were asked the same question and so many of them said “I would like to roller skate just once in my life”. And so a stream of roller skating mice went by the cat in heaven, who was just waiting for them. Sometimes you have to be careful asking what you want.