On October 25, 2001, Senator Russ Feingold made a statement on the Senate floor, during the debate over the Patriot Act.
Of course, there is no doubt that if we lived in a police state, it would be easier to catch terrorists. If we lived in a country that allowed the police to search your home at any time for any reason; if we lived in a country that allowed the government to open your mail, eavesdrop on your phone conversations, or intercept your email communications; if we lived in a country that allowed the government to hold people in jail indefinitely based on what they write or think, or based on mere suspicion that they are up to no good, then the government would no doubt discover and arrest more terrorists.
But that probably would not be a country in which we would want to live. And that would not be a country for which we could, in good conscience, ask our young people to fight and die. In short, that would not be America.
We have since learned that the government has used National Security Letters to invade people’s homes without a warrant, that they have violated the law to eavesdrop on our electronic communications, and they have held U.S. citizens in custody indefinitely, in violation of habeas corpus, which can only be constitutionally ignored in times of “cases of rebellion or invasion.”
In light of this, do you agree that Russ Feingold was correct when he was the only only senator to oppose passage of the Patriot Act?
Would you tend to agree more with candidate Jon Tester, who said “Let me be clear. I don’t want to weaken the Patriot Act. I want to get rid of it,” or with former Senate Intelligence Chairman Sen. Pat Roberts, who said, ““I am a strong supporter of the First Amendment, the Fourth Amendment and civil liberties. But you have no civil liberties if you are dead”?
Would you have voted for the Military Commissions Act of 2006, which passed the House on September 29, 2006 by 250-170 vote (with 32 Democratic supporters)? Do you disagree with then Judiciary Committee ranking member Sen. Pat Leahy, who said at the time:
“Authorizing indefinite detention of anybody the Government designates, without any proceeding and without any recourse — is what our worst critics claim the United States would do, not what American values, traditions and our rule of law would have us do. This is not just a bad bill, this is a dangerous bill.”