Tom Burghardt: Protecting us from Our Freedoms!

As night follows day, you can count on Congress to serve as the loyal servants and willing accomplices of our out-of-control "National Security State". Last week, in another shameless demonstration of congressional "bipartisanship", Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), and House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), forged a filthy backroom deal that reauthorizes insidious surveillance provisions of the "Patriot Act" for an additional four years. "Like clockwork," the ACLU reports, Reid and McConnell introduced a bill, S1038, which will extend the provisions until June 1, 2015. As of this writing, the text of that measure has yet to be published. And, like a feint echo from the past, when the "Patriot Act" was signed into law nearly a decade ago in the wake of the 9/11 provocation and the anthrax attacks, the ACLU tells us that that the Senate begins its debate on Monday with votes possible that same night, but why not fore-go a vote altogether? After all, with the White House skipping a legal deadline to to seek congressional authorization of the military action in Libya under the war powers act, few on the hill are are objecting!