The first reference to the Patriot Act that I can find on this blog comes from September 2007. (I started blogging in the middle of 04). At that time it was my view that “the Patriot Act would have had Patrick Henry running to his gun cabinet.”
The next March I wrote about why patriots don’t like the Patriot Act. You can read that here.
Some thought legislation called the “Patriot Act” held out great promise for the future defense of America. I thought it was an ugly baby the day we brought it home from the hospital.
Now that said, I do hope all this hubristic spying business gets wrapped around Obama’s neck three or four times, and it looks like that is happening. Great, and yay. I confess that all these scandals plopping out of the sky have made his second term a much more pleasant prospect than I thought it was going to be.
But we must not forget to hold accountable all the Republicans who voted to leave all these doors unlocked in the first place — and who then called their criminal negligence patriotism. Those who saw the whole bad-idea-ness of the entire enterprise were apparently not patriots. Shame on them!
So as a point of personal privilege, if I may return to the old proverbial chestnut about the fox and the henhouse, I would like to ask every Republican who voted for the Patriot Act to stop going on television in order to tell us they think the fox is guilty of “over-reach.” Ya think?
I couldn’t agree more. The Patriot Act has all the earmarks of Lettres de Cachet. These Lettres allowed the French Monarchy to imprison people on whim, bribe, or personal indulgence for hundreds of years. They were one of the vital grievances that led to the French Revolution. We know how well that went. The terrorist attack of 2001 did not inhibit my safety or freedoms, the Federal Government did that. Since I live in a “Constitution Free Zone” , I have been subject to Border Patrol harassment. I have been asked if I possess “Papers” on several occasions . I… Read more »
I remember having a conversation with my Dad a few days after the first time Obama was elected. Essentially, I told him that “we” may just have elected a the most powerful president our country has ever seen. How could this be so? Well, as it turns out there was this little thing that got passed during the Bush administration called “The Patriot Act.” You may remember it, it seems so long ago. It was passed as a sort of emergency powers clause that the government could use to infringe on all sorts of rights, privacy being the main one.… Read more »
Well put Pastor Doug. Though I would suggest that they could still attack Obama on the issue, if they would first honestly repent and admit that they got it wrong themselves in the first place, and that President Bush was also guilty of the overreach which they enabled.