Protecting civil rights is not trivial

I don't have much time to blog on this, but Sen. Russ Feingold delivered an awesome critique of the Patriot Act deal reached earlier this week. Go Russ!

You can check his floor statement out here. Here's one of the best lines:

"Mr. President, trust of government cannot be demanded, or asserted, or assumed; it must be earned. And this Administration has not earned our trust. It has fought reasonable safeguards for constitutional freedoms every step of the way. It has resisted congressional oversight and often misled the public about its use of the Patriot Act. We know now that it has even authorized illegal wiretaps and is making misleading legal arguments to try to justify them. We sunsetted 16 provisions of the original Patriot Act precisely so we could revisit them and make necessary changes - to make improvements based on the experience of four years with the Act, and with the careful deliberation and debate that, quite frankly, was missing four years ago. Well, Mr. President, this process of reauthorization has certainly generated debate, but if we pass the conference report, even with the few White House modifications, we will have wasted a lot of time and missed our opportunity to finally get it right."