Patriot Act Showdown

At midnight on December 31, while Americans are ringing in the New Year, terrorists will have something to celebrate too: The expiration of 16 key provisions of the USA Patriot Act. Excuse us if we don't break out the Champagne.

There's still a chance a deal can be reached to extend the anti-terrorism law before the deadline, but don't count on it. That would require an act of responsibility from Senate Democrats -- something that's in short supply these days on matters of national security. Instead, this Senate minority of 42 Democrats and four Republicans prefers to impose its will on bipartisan majorities by refusing to let the renewal of the Patriot Act come to the Senate floor for a vote. President Bush called the filibuster "inexcusable" this week, and most Republicans seem ready to fight this one out for a change. They ought to.

The Patriot Act was passed in 2001 by huge bipartisan majorities -- 357-66 in the House and 98-1 in the Senate. In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, most Members of Congress believed that the law provided reasonable protection of Americans' civil liberties. Its most important contribution was to tear down the infamous "wall" between intelligence gathering and law enforcement.

The Justice Department says that without the Patriot Act it could not have broken up terrorist cells in Buffalo, Portland (Oregon), Seattle, Detroit and Virginia. Critics say that claim is impossible to verify, but we do know for sure that no court has verified a single example of the Patriot Act being used to curtail anyone's civil liberties. Rest assured the Act's critics would have found one by now if it existed.

It's true that the bill was passed in haste, and just about everyone agrees that clarifications are in order. So after 23 Congressional hearings with testimony by 60-plus witnesses, both houses passed amended versions of the Patriot Act. The final bill that emerged from the conference committee this month contains more than 30 new civil liberties protections.

Among them are several additional safeguards on the Section 215 "library" provision that allows investigators to examine terrorist-suspects' business records. There are also new limits on the use of delayed-notice search warrants, better known as "sneak-and-peek" warrants. We never were exercised about either provision -- if law enforcement can use these tools when investigating health-care fraud, drug trafficking and the Mob, why not in terrorist probes? But opponents and civil libertarians can't say their major concerns were ignored.

The Senate filibusterers include four Republicans -- John Sununu, Chuck Hagel, Lisa Murkowski and Larry Craig. We called Senator Sununu for an explanation, and his rhetoric was more grandiose than his objections. Among his arcane concerns is a provision that would require targets of Section 215 orders to give the name of their attorneys to the FBI.

"To the best of my knowledge, this is a provision that exists nowhere else in the law and could have a chilling effect on the individual's right to counsel," he says. But why would it? Law-abiding attorneys have nothing to fear, and in any case they have to appear with their clients eventually. We don't question the Senator's motives, but we do wonder about his political common sense. He'd let the larger benefits of the Patriot Act expire because House negotiators refused to accept all of his points.

More broadly, this Republican foursome is abetting what looks to be nothing more than a political exercise to pin a defeat on President Bush. New York's Chuck Schumer actually claims he woke up on the morning of the vote last week, read a newspaper story about wiretaps on al Qaeda suspects and suddenly decided the unrelated Patriot Act was bad policy. Most politicians don't admit so readily that their convictions are so impressionable.

Democrats don't even want to take responsibility for killing the legislation. Instead they want Republicans to let them extend the existing version for three months, which means they think it's just fine for Americans to live with the allegedly frightening terms of the original Act. This filibuster-and-pass-it-next-year strategy looks like an attempt to appease their vocal left-wing base that seems to think terrorism is a minor threat, while also dodging any responsibility for killing the Act as they head into next year's elections.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid gave this double game away when he boasted to a Democratic meeting last Friday that "I killed the Patriot Act." But after Mr. Bush cited him publicly for that quote, Mr. Reid turned around and said he really does want to pass it. If Democrats believe the Patriot Act is as terrible as they describe it, then let them take responsibility for their filibuster -- and for killing it.