After a wave of news about attempted domestic terror attacks, Democrats facing a tough election year quietly voted this week to extend the Patriot Act legislation that many of them had decried under former President George W. Bush.
The House passed a one-year reauthorization of the Patriot Act Thursday night 315-97, just a day after the Senate moved the bill on a late-evening unanimous voice vote.
With the law facing a sunset date of Feb. 28, the Senate opted to vote for the extension of three crucial provisions of the act rather than opening debate on a revised bipartisan plan passed by the Judiciary Committee in October that would have imposed stricter privacy safeguards.
“In the end, it became non-controversial,” Chairman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) told POLITICO. “[There was] the growing concern about increase on the pace of attacks on the homeland... and frankly, I think the Patriot [Act] got a bad name under the Bush Administration.”
