Patriot Act Filibuster Avoided
In a 96-3 nailbiter, the Senate voted today to prevent a filibuster on the Patriot Act. As expected, Russ Feingold led the filibuster effort. He was joined by Robert Byrd and Jumpin’ Jim Jeffords as the only Senators to support the filibuster. What that means is that Feingold, Jeffords and Byrd were to the left of even Ted Kennedy, Barbara Boxer and Charles Schumer. That takes some doing.
Feingold, who is considering seeking his party’s presidential nomination, plans to make the Senate spend several more days on the bill. He complained that Majority Leader Bill Frist, (R-TN), had used procedural maneuvers to prevent him from trying to add more protections for people investigated by the government. “We still have not addressed some of the most significant problems with the Patriot Act,” Feingold said.
That sounds like sour grapes, Mr. Feingold. If you didn’t think that “some of the most significant problems” had been addressed, why didn’t you try getting involved with working out a compromise with your fellow senators? Whining about what should have been instead of working together to make things happen isn’t what a leader does.
I suspect that Feingold’s whining has more to do with his courting of the Daily Kos/MoveOn.org crowd than it does with improving the bill. The Daily Kos/MoveOn.org crowd has a longer ‘record’ of worrying about nonexistent rights violations than they have on protecting us from terrorists.
Last year’s election made clear that the American people will choose security over everything else in wartime.
Cross-post at LetFreedomRing
February 16th, 2006 at 2:44 pm
I think that the usual leftists (Kennedy, Feinstein, Reid, Schumer etc..) would have supported the filibuster had it not been for the recent announcements about how the Patriot attack has prevented attacks. They don’t support the act, just fear being cast as weak on terror. Once people again become complaicent, they will have no problem trying to “kill the patriot act”.