The U.S. Senate ended a high-stakes impasse late Wednesday and voted to extend key provisions of the USA Patriot Act for six months. It was set to expire in Dec. 31.

The temporary extension, approved without dissent according to Reuters, would provide time to try to resolve differences over safeguards for civil liberties before making permanent most of the provisions the Bush administration claims are vital in the “war on terrorism.”

Lawmakers who helped negotiate the deal just hours earlier voiced confidence that the White House and House of Representatives would give its needed approval despite earlier objections to such a short-term remedy.

“This is a common-sense solution that gives the Senate more time to craft a consensus bill that will promote our security while preserving our freedom,” said Sen. Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat.

“Agreements are always the product of time and place,” said Sen. Larry Craig of Idaho, one of a handful of Republicans who had earlier joined most Democrats in opposing permanent extension with a procedural roadblock.

Initially passed after the September 11, 2001, attacks, the Patriot Act expanded the authority of the federal government to conduct secret searches, obtain private records, intercept telephone calls and take other action in the effort to track down suspected terrorists.

Earlier on Wednesday, 52 of the 100 senators, including eight Republicans, signed a letter in support of a Democratic-led bid to extend provisions, set to expire on December 31, for an extension of just three months to provide time to settle differences.

Senate Republican leaders, who had opposed any such short-term deal, agreed to the six-month extension following increased efforts to find common ground.

Full Reuters story

What is not being articulated clearly in this debate is that this administration has been and wants to continue treating ANY and ALL opponents of Bush as terrorists, including every group of people assembling legally under the First Amendment to promote peace, a healthy environment or the ethical treatment of animals.

The Attorney General and the head of the Homeland Security Department held a press conference yesterday and made the argument that the president circumvented Congress and the courts to use the same eavesdropping tools - already available for “garden variety” crimes such as bank robbery and drug dealing - in the war on terror.

The problem with their argument - and what no one seems to understand yet - is that once a peace activist such as Cindy Sheehan or an environmental activist with Greenpeace is labeled an “enemy combatant” under the Patriot Act, they can be “ghosted” and held in a secret prison without access to the courts. They can be tortured just as the so-called members of al Qaida have been tortured in these secret, foreign prisons.

The act as written allows unregulated spying on not just radical Muslim’s intent on killing Americans, but all kinds of innocent citizens who the Bush administration considers to constitute a “threat to national security” just because they do not line up in lock-step with the Bush Republican Party.

Remember Bush’s mantra: “You are either for us or against us.”

As we have reported here before, the only part of government left protecting us against total tyranny are the Democrats in the U.S. Senate. If left to Bush and Cheney, we would already be living under a dictatorship. We already live under a “dick-tatorship.”

If the Democrats in the Senate are not successful in standing against the drive for an Imperial Presidency, there are only a couple of options left. The only way to oust a dictator is through a coup. There are two kinds of coups: “bloody coups” and “bloodless coups.”

If a majority of the American people want to live under a religious dictatorship and allow Bush to get away with shredding the Constitution, then the educated minority will have to decide which type of coup to use. We would argue for a bloodless coup.

There are many examples of a bloody coups, especially in Latin America. Fidel Castro’s Revolution in Cuba comes to mind, along with the American Revolution. The political right in the U.S. has on occassion resorted to bloody coups, as they did in the 1960s when they killed John and then Bobby Kennedy.

Here’s one scenario for a bloodless coup. First of all, the Democrats need to regain control of at least one branch of government, the House of Representatives. Regaining the Senate would also be good.

Then the representatives of the people could bring Articles of Impeachment against Bush and Cheney and remove them from office for high crimes and misdemeanors. Under the line of succession provisions in the Constitution and the rules of Congress, the Speaker of the House would then take over as president and have the authority to appoint a new vice president.

We could then fight it out all over again in the 2008 election cycle, but the forces on the right would be seriously diminished after such a trial.

We could then get on with the business of creating the kind of world we want: a world much less dependent on Saudi oil and fossil fuels, a more peaceful world where people around the globe once again respect what the United States of America stands for, a world where radical idiots are not emboldened to attack us due to our greed and wearing our Christianity on our political sleeves.

In short, we need to create a world where people respect each other despite political and religious differences. Otherwise, we are doomed to continue fighting this war Bush started for the rest of our lives.

Tags: Patriot Act

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