This past Thursday and Friday our national security was the recipient of a one-two punch by two separate but intimately linked events.
The first blow was delivered by the media wing of the DNC at the New York Times. I'm referring of course to the article by James Risen and Eric Lichtblau on 12/15 in which classified intelligence secrets were yet again splashed across the front page in the hopes of influencing the legislature and harming the Bush administration. The timing of the release the day of the important cloture vote in the Senate to end debate on the renewal of the Patriot act should leave no doubt as to the complicitous nature of the relation between the NYT and the Democrats. Chuck Schumer was holding a copy of the Friday NYT on the floor of the Senate and referred to it while he was debating the Patriot Act extension. No need to read between the lines there. The MSM once again shows it is willing to put the political agenda of the left ahead of national security.
This leads me to the second punch which was the refusal by the Senate on Friday to reauthorize major portions of the Patriot Act past the December 31st deadline. By a vote of 52-47, with 5 Republicans voting no and 2 Democrats voting yes, supporters did not achieve the 60 vote super-majority that was needed to stop the filibuster and call a vote. Now there are 16 provisions of the Patriot Act which were not made permanent in the original passage, including the controversial roving wiretaps and secret warrants for books and records provisions, that will expire at the end of the year taking away valuable weapons for intelligence gathering and usage from the agencies trying to keep America safe.
Critics charge that these provisions infringe on the rights of law-abiding citizens. The fact is that in the four years since passage of the Patriot Act there have been no verifiable abuses of any provisions. This is most evident by the fact that there have been no claims or lawsuits filed pursuant to Section 223 of the Patriot Act which created the ability to sue for money damage for any person aggrieved by the violation of the Act. You know that if there were violations that could lead to big lawsuit payouts the lawyers would be lined up around the block filing suits ad infinitum.
So to recap we have now alerted the terrorists to yet another weapon we are using against them and taken away multiple other weapons that have been working for the past four years. We start the week less safe and protected as a country than we were last week. This is cause for great concern because the terrorists job just got easier.