Thursday’s developments perfectly sum up the completely ineffective nature of Obama and the Democrats: the Patriot Act was extended and there were hours of staged histrionics on health care reform that will go nowhere.

the big measure here is the job creation tax credit, which comes in two forms – payroll tax forgiveness for new employees, and a business credit for retaining individuals hired in 2010, essentially an incentive to hire now. In addition, there are extensions for unemployment benefits and the 65% COBRA subsidy from the stimulus, allowing laid-off workers to retain their current health insurance at a reduced rate. The third big element relates to spending on infrastructure projects, through both renewing the Highway Trust Fund and some new allocations to do with transportation.

And that’s mostly it. . . mostly.

The WaPo has a story out describing how the FBI, from 2002 until 2006, used exigent letters to collect phone records without the proper underlying terrorist justification.

Eric Schmidt implies that all your searches are available to the Feds.

Tags: Eric Schmidt, Google, Patriot Act, spying

Jim White has two important diaries on Joe Lieberman’s promise to hold hearings on the attack on Fort Hood. In the first, Jim notes that such a hearing will whip up anti-Muslim hysteria. In the second, Jim raises concerns about Nidal Hasan’s interrogation.
I think both of Jim’s diaries raise important concerns. But I’d like to [...]

The House Judiciary today passed Jerry Nadler’s bill reining in state secrets abuse by a vote of 18-12, with Adam Schiff as the sole Democrat voting against the bill. One thing Nadler has added to his bill since it was first introduced are measures to prevent the government from refusing to give plaintiff lawyers clearance [...]

Tags: Adam Schiff, House Judiciary Committee, Jerrold Nadler, Patriot Act, state secrets

A quick overview of Wednesday’s doings in House Judiciary Committee’s mark-up of the PATRIOT Act renewal.
The hearing started with John Conyers introducing a managers amendment to the bill that made tweaks to the overal bill to move them slightly closer to what the Obama Administration wanted. Republicans tried to gut National Security Letters (NSLs). One [...]

Tags: Adam Schiff, House Judiciary Committee, John Conyers, Mel Watt, National Security Letters

Dems on the Senate Judiciary Committee already rolled over for the administration, which wants to conduct fishing expeditions on Americans’ personal shopping data. Are the Dems in the House Judiciary Committee are teeing up to do the same?

 
John Conyers, Jerry Nadler, and Bobby Scott just introduced bills that will provide needed reforms to PATRIOT and FISA while reauthorizing most of the sunsetting authorities this year.
 
From the Committee press release, the PATRIOT bill does the following.
Title I: Patriot Act Related Amendments

Roving Wiretaps
• Clarifies roving wiretap laws in order to ensure that [...]

There are two disturbing details in Charlie Savage’s coverage of Thursday’s PATRIOT Act Hearing. As I reported on Thursday, the first thing the Committee did on Thursday was accept a whole package of amendments from Jeffrey Beauregard Sessions III, doing things like limiting the library records under Section 215 which must be shown to have some tie to terrorism or spying.