I mean, are we supposed to worry that the government can’t conduct timely surveillance on a non-U.S. person ‘lone wolf’ terrorist such as an individual who has self radicalized and responds to international terrorist calls to attack the United States,” when the government has never had a need to use this authority, not even with Khalid Ali-M Aldawsari, who was a “a non-U.S. person ‘lone wolf’ terrorist such as an individual who has self radicalized and responds to international terrorist calls to attack the United States”?

When the government, through its executive and compliant Congress, wants to cut surveillance and privacy corners out of laziness and control greed, and otherwise crush the soul of the Constitution and the 4th Amendment, demagoguery and fake exigencies are the order of the day. And so they are again. Oh, and of course they want to get out of town on their vacation. And that is what has happened today.

Wyden and Udall are trying to swap out that language to require that the information both be relevant to an investigation and be tied to some suspected terrorist (or Julian Assange).

It appears that Rand Paul has reached some kind of deal on his insistence to get votes for his amendments to the Patriot Act. There will now be votes on the amendments, with a likely 60-vote threshold. But the expectation is that the amendments will fail, and final passage will be secured Thursday. That will be followed by a quick vote in the House, and then a flight of the bill to Europe so President Obama can sign it before a midnight deadline when the three provisions of the measure would expire. And you said Congress can never be efficient. They can when motivated!

one of the amendments to the PATRIOT Act Harry Reid made sure wouldn’t get a vote pertained to making it clear how the government interprets the PATRIOT Act. Mark Udall and Ron Wyden wanted to force the government to at least explain how they were interpreting the law so constituents would know how lame their Senators were for voting in favor of it.

Provisions slated to expire include: the “roving wiretap provision,” which permits government to obtain intelligence surveillance orders without identifying the person or the facility being tapped (Section 206 of the Act); the “Lone Wolf” provision, which permits intelligence agencies to survey non-US persons not affiliated with a foreign organization (Section 6001 of the Act); and Section 215, which grants government authorization to obtain “any tangible thing” relevant to a terrorism investigation, even if there is no evidence the “thing” pertains to the terrorist or terrorist activity under investigation.

Now, ten years after 9/11, with Osama bin Laden dead, in a broad bipartisan vote, the United States Senate moved forward with another extension of the “temporary” Patriot Act. The vote was 74-8. Both the support and the very limited opposition to this extension were near-even slits along party lines; true bipartisan efforts.

There is still bipartisanship in Washington when something like depriving civil liberties in the name of Terror has to get done. We may have killed Osama bin Laden, but we have yet to slay the Boogeyman.

The Senate will vote later today on a motion to proceed to S.1038 which would extend three expiring provisions of the Patriot Act for four years, with almost no debate.

UPDATE: The Senate passed cloture 74-8, so they’ll proceed to the bill. Final passage is expected Wednesday.

Congressional leaders in both parties made a deal to extend three expiring provisions of the Patriot Act for four more years with little debate. Earlier this year, the same provisions – roving wiretaps, court-approved access to business records, and “lone wolf” provisions allowing surveillance on foreign citizens without connections to terrorists – were extended for 90 days.