For the first time I am deeply disappointed in both Kerry and Kennedy.

[saracat]

This Patriot Act vote was dreadful. I respect Harkin, Leahy Akaka, Feingold and Byrd for their votes. There might be some I missed. They stood up for the constitution, which in the end, is all that counts. I am saddened today beyond belief. I don't get it. I really don't.

[WildEyedLiberal]

1. But Byrd voted for Alito, Akaka voted to end the filibuster

You can make a case for/against anyone using one vote.

It's the sum of votes that counts. Not even Feingold et al want the entire act repealed. And Feingold voted for Roberts and Ashcroft, who display an irreverance towards the constitution, so once again, you can pretty much choose to canonize or vilify anyone using ONE vote.

I'm not saying you don't have a right to be pissed at this vote, or even that I agree with it. Just reminding you to keep things in perspective. Kerry, Kennedy, and Boxer wouldn't have voted for it if changes hadn't been made to the most offensive parts of it.

[saracat]

3. I know that but this was the most important vote of all!

Everyone knows that I am a fanatic on choice and that I consider the Bankruptcy Bill something no Dem should have ever voted for, but this was an Act NO senator of either party should have voted for. They swore to uphold the constitution when they took their oath of office! Kerry Kennedy and Boxer had no business voting for it at all. This "one' vote has changed my perspective of them. I can't help it. I am devastated. I expected better.Feingold cannot hold a candle to them with the rest of his voting record. I cannot accept that they would do this. My idols certainly have feet of clay! I guess this teaches me not to be so idealistic and that there is danger in "hero' worship. Maybe there is a reason for this I don't understand but I cannot rationalize this in any meaningful way yet!

[WildEyedLiberal]

4. I really can't see any one vote as that important, sorry

:shrug:

There's always going to be some vote we disagree about. Honestly, I trust Kerry, Kennedy, and Boxer enough to know that if they are comfortable with the changes made, then it can't be all bad. No one wants to repeal the whole act. Alito is far more dangerous since he will sit there a lifetime; laws can always be changed or amended. Byrd, for instance - I really don't buy his "constitution man" act anymore since he voted for Alito, who believes in the unitary executive theory which undermines the entire separation of powers. If I had to pick one make or break vote, it'd be Alito. I don't really like most of the Patriot Act but it wouldn't have passed if amendments hadn't been made to it.

[saracat]

11. I don't think I trust anyone anymore. This places unprecedented

power in the hands of the President.Some of the provisions are permanent and some expire after four years.No matter what the instance, the damage that can be done by this Admin is inconceviable. It may be that this law will be overturned by another Administration but if we haven't learned by now how much damage these people can do, we will never learn. They cannot be trusted with that much power. Period.I agree with you about the Alito vote. That was for a lifetime and it is horrible.However this places such power in the hands of an evil imbecile that it is possible we won't have a lifetime as a democratic government, or a much shortened one.While that may not happen, we are allowing for the possibility, and that is unacceptable.

[TayTay]

10. I don't think there was any movement to push this vote

I saw Sen. Feingold do at least two (maybe more) diaries on DKos about his opposition to the revised Patriot Act. Those posts didn't really generate any heat. There was no real groundswell of opposition to this vote either in the liberal web or in 'man on the street' polls. Nobody seemed to really be pushing this issue. (Except for Sen. Feingold and he wasn't attracting a lot of support anywhere.)

I think this one fell through the cracks. It's a very strange situation. The vote structure for the bill this week was extremely confusing. (At one point I couldn't figure out what the hell they were voting on: cloture for the bill, cloture on the amendments to the bill or what?)

It really a strange, strange vote. I hope to God it's not a precusor of things to come and that issues like the NSA wiretapping get dropped. There is still a problem, as far as I can tell, in the Senate with the Intelligence RE-Authorization bill. The House objects strongly to 3 provisions in the bill that Sens. Kennedy & Kerry have put in and won't agree to the revised bill. (One of the privisions is Sen. Kerry's request that the Admin provide reports on the clandestine prisons that are being used in foreign countries and that might be torturing people away from the jurisdiction of American law.) This ambevelance on the part of the lib web on the Patriot Act does not bode well for these other issues. (Well, to me anyway.)

For what it's worth, I didn't like the Patriot Act. I wrote and asked both of my Sens to vote against it. They voted for it. I did try. I understand their reasons as this is the 109th (Weasel) Congress and Sen. Kennedy's letter explaining that they at least got something out of a bill that was eventually going to pass anyway was a little bit comforting. (Then again, I have a history with both Sens and they have been on the level with this stuff in the past. I am giving them the benefit of the doubt now cuz of that history.)

[Mass]

2. I disagree with their votes too.

However, this does not erase what they did on other votes. I also noted that (with the exception of Harkin) the 10 most liberal Democrats voted for this bill and I really wonder why.

May it be that these 10 democrats are from states that are far from very big cities and feel a little more secure? I find striking that Boxer, Kennedy, Lautenberg, Reed, ..., all strong supporters of civil liberties as much as those in the list, have voted for the Patriot Act.

I think they need to give us the key. Leahy recognized it was an extremely difficult vote and that it was hard for him to decide how to vote.

In fact, since the IWR, I think this is the first really important vote I disagree with him (votes supporting TV Marti are not important votes).

Talking about disagreeing with somebody's votes and totally OT: why did Feinstein vote against LIHEAP?

[sandnsea]

5. Maybe FISA law changes

The Patriot Act made changes in the FISA law, maybe some of these changes are involved in the NSA wiretapping and if we don't have them, it would give Bush an excuse for what he did.

increases the number of judges on the Foreign Intelligence SurveillanceAct (FISA) court from 7 to 11;!

allows application for a FISA surveillance or search order when gathering foreign intelligence is a significant reason for the application rather than the reason;

authorizes pen register and trap & trace device orders for e-mail as well as telephone conversations

And here is the rest of what was changed in the Patriot Act. Alot of it is just updating what is already done with telephone surveillance to include internet surveillance. As has been said so many times, even Feingold supports most of this. There's only a couple of items that still need fixing. It appears to be a question of it doing more good than harm.

http://72.14.207.104/search?q=cache:VmMti9AI84QJ:www.fas.org/irp/crs/RS21203.pdf+overview+patriot+act&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=1

[Mass]

6. Here is Kennedy statement

It appears that it is a question of voting for anything that will force the administration to give more accountability that it has to give now, given that it cannot be trusted. Every bit won is good to take, given that it would have passed anyway.

http://kennedy.senate.gov/~kennedy/statements/06/03/2006302A36.html

[saracat]

15. He "regrets he couldn't accomplish more" and yet votes for it?

None of this makes any sense to me.If it would have passed anyway and you think it could be better, why no protest vote? And why not from Kennedy of all people? He has nothing to be afraid of. I just don't understand it. He had nothing to lose.

[wisteria]

7. This doesn't bother me as much as the changing of the Supreme

Court and the votes for Alito. Acts can be recinded and changed or even ignored. The dynamics of the Supreme Court and the swing to the right will be with us until I am old and feeble.
I believe Kerry was doing what he belived was right. I suppose I don't see things in black and white, but shades of grey. I have decided to trust him on this.

[jenndar]

9. Agreed.

The Patriot Act can still be worked on, but there's no way to use legislation to mitigate something like Samuel Alito.

[karynnj]

8. This was also a case where the real vote was the cloture vote

when it lost, there was no way the actual vote was going to lose. If the cloture vote would have failed, they could have pushed for the amendments they wanted.

From the comments on the blog from Denver, Kerry said that he felt that overall the bill was acceptable though he still preferred changes and that he would vote for it. So, it sounds like he felt the most eggregious flaws were fixed. As the bill would have passed no matter how he voted, the choice to vote for it was because as he had said overall he thought it wasn't that bad.

The changes to the act can always be enacted in the future if the country moves in a saner direction. As WEL said, the Alito vote was worse. Both Akaka and Byrd voted against the filibuster on Alito. If they and others would have followed Kerry on that, with or without the Patriot act, the constitution would be in better hands.

[saracat]

12. If the ACTwould have pased no matter how he voted, why couldn't he take

a stand and vote against it if it was flawed? He voted against cloture and then for the Act. "I voted against it before I voted for it' ? Here we go again.Playing politics with this doesn't work for me. There is a time to be black and white and up or down. This was one of those times. I still don't get it. Sorry.

[TayTay]

13. It was confusing.

and incredibly badly managed. (Again, I couldn't figure out what they were voting on on 4/6 of those votes.) If I were Sen. Feingold, I would sue my leadership for non-support. Someone should have been out there trying to explain this more.

There was no movement on the web for the Senate Democrats to unite and oppose this bill. There was no push on the talk shows or in print. :shrug:

[saracat]

16. Agreed

[karynnj]

14. The two votes in this case can make sense

(unlike with Alito) If cloture failed they could push for more changes. But when faced with voting on the bill at hand, the comment he had made implied that although it wasn't perfect, he felt it was acceptable. I really don't see it as black or white.

[TayTay]

17. Saracet: I feel like this is an unfinished debate

I felt like the debate about what happened with Paul Hackett was unfinished too. (You never called me on a central point of that debate and I am vulnerable on it again with the Duckworth/Cegelis primary endorsement: Would I be happy if JK did this to someone running in MA? Like I said, this is an unfinished discussion.)

Part of the reason for this is because this is really hard stuff to talk about and partly because of the limits of communicating in an all written forum. (Sigh!) I care deeply about the issues that the Patriot Act raises. I am deathly afraid that we are giving this Prez powers that he will abuse. I am afraid that people will suffer and in some cases die from this kind of abuse. ( We have prisoners of war and we have whatever we call the terrorist suspects we catch but don't allow legal recourse to and some of them have died from torture.) The idea of civil liberties in America is not, 'Well, I didn't do anything wrong, so why should I worry about the government having the power to snoop into my life.' The idea of civil liberties in America is forbidding the government from doing certain kinds of searches. Period. The government does not have this power. It does not have the power to search Americans, intercept their phone calls or snoop into what movies they rent or what books they read without a damn good cause that can be presented to a judge. That's what the Bill of Rights mean.

I believe that. I like to think that this is foremost in my mind when I think about working to elect good people to government. As you most obviously do.) I also believe that it is the responsibility of good citizens to call their Reps (and Senators) on their votes and actions. (Geez, not to be repeating this endlessly, but I heard John Kerry ask people to do that in April and at other occasions. Hold us accountable. It's what's behind the theory of representative government.)

I hope this conversation continues. I want to hear more from you. This is extremely important stuff. We had a great discussion months ago on the pro-choice position of the Dem Party and why extremely strong Pro-Choice people like Sen. Kerry are supporting anti-choice candidates like Casey in PA. That is not a discussion that can be settled. It's a raging battle that calls into question what you believe, what you can tolerate as a trade-off and how you reconcile your core beliefs with what you also believe is doable in the political arena. I don't want these difficult discussions to go away and I hope they continue. And if not here, then, ahm, where? It should be safe enough in here to voice vigorous and strong opinions that might clash with something Sen. Kerry says. Debate is a very, very good thing. More please.

So, ahm, can we talk some more?