The Senate Judiciary Committee was faced with a crucial ethical test yesterday, and most of the committee failed. The test came during a special executive meeting to consider whether to reauthorize the infamous Patriot Act, a law that was passed in a rush, without any senator even reading the bill, granting the Executive Branch extreme powers to spy on the private lives of law-abiding Americans in clear defiance of the guarantee of protection against unreasonable search and seizure in the Bill of Rights.

The first problem came when the Judiciary Committee leadership completely ignored one piece of legislation, the Justice Act, designed to deal with the problem. That legislation, written by Senator Russ Feingold, was shoved aside in favor of legislation crafted by the committee chair, Senator Patrick Leahy – S. 1692. S. 1692 contains almost none of the constitutional protections that would be created if the Justice Act were passed.

One Senator, Dick Durbin of Illinois, attempted to get the legislation back on track with a simple, reasonable amendment. The Durbin amendment would restrict Section 215 spying by the government. Section 215 of the Patriot Act grants permission to government spy agencies to go out and grab commercial databases such as bank records, electronic telecommunications, medical information and so forth, then pour all that information together into giant databases which are used to track the activities of law-abiding people living in the United States.

The Durbin amendment would have altered the law to allow Section 215 only to be used to gather foreign information that doesn’t have anything to do with people living in the United States, or information that’s connected to terrorism investigations, or information needed to protect the American government from foreign spying. Information about American citizens who are nor suspected of terrorism or spying could no longer be seized by U.S. government spies.

Is that too much to ask, that our private lives remain private, when we’re not suspected of any crimes? According to 15 out of the 19 members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, yes, that’s too much to ask. Only 4 members of the committee voted in favor of the Durbin amendment.

It was the kind of thing we had come to expect from the Senate when it was under control of the Republican Party. Back then, many people had the naive belief that if only the Democrats could take back Congress and the White House, these kind of attacks against our constitutional rights would stop.

That belief cannot be sustained with the kind of vote we saw in the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday. Only 4 Democrats took a stand against George W. Bush’s most infamous attack on the Constitution. 8 Democrats – twice as many – stood with George W. Bush and the Republican Party.

Democrats who opposed George W. Bush’s spy program Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL)
Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI)
Senator Benjamin Cardin (D-MD)
Senator Arlen Specter (D-PA)

Democrats who SUPPORTED George W. Bush’s spy program
Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT)
Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA)
Senator Al Franken (D-MN)
Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY)
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI)
Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN)
Senator Ted Kaufman (D-DE)
Herb Kohl (D-WI)