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Tea Partiers Help ACLU, House Dems Stop Patriot Act Renewal

Susan Crabtree and Ryan J. Reilly | February 9, 2011, 9:27AM

Reps. Ron Paul (R-TX) and Dennis Kucinich (D-OH)

The American Civil Liberties Union's Michelle Richardson didn't know where things stood ahead of the House's vote expended certain provisions of the PATRIOT Act last night.

"I have no special inside knowledge on how this is going to shake down, but we're certainly going to be watching it closely," she told TPM ahead of the Tuesday night vote.

The big mystery was how the Tea Party-backed members would break on the first national security vote in the new Congress -- and whether the libertarian leanings of members from the right could align with concerns about government overreach on the left. Richardson said they'd be "seeing if the small government beliefs that have been espoused also apply in the national security context."

In the end, 26 Republicans broke with their leadership to oppose the bill, which still gained a majority of votes (227 to 148) but didn't pass.

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Topics: ACLU, Civil Rights, Civil liberties, Patriot Act, Ron Paul, Tea Parties

Patriot Act's Wiretapping, FISA Provisions Quietly Come Up For Renewal

Rachel Slajda | January 25, 2011, 8:48AM

From a Patriot Act protest in 2005.

At the end of next month, two of the Patriot Act's controversial provisions -- one authorizing "roving" wiretapping and one allowing the government to pull all sorts of records and electronic communications from U.S. citizens -- will expire.

Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI), the new chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, has already introduced legislation that would simply extend the provisions for one more year.

That would essentially be a repeat of what happened a year ago, after the provisions expired in December 2009. There was a bit of a fight from civil liberties advocates, but the measures were renewed for another year at the end of last February.