Republicans spent all of 2010 promising that they would do things differently, if they were given majority control over the U.S. House of Representatives again. Specifically, they promised that they would ensure that every piece of legislation passed would be in compliance with the Constitution of the United States of America.

However, last week the House Republican leadership pushed through a renewal of clearly unconstitutional provisions of the Patriot Act. They did so without any effort to investigate the tens of thousands of abuses under the Patriot Act that recently discovered, and without any hearings to review efforts to repair the constitutional violations that have become rampant under the Patriot Act.

Lynn Woolsey did not allow this broken promise to pass un-noted. She rose to the floor of the U.S. House, and although Representative James Sensenbrenner attempted to interrupt her, she made the following pointed comments:

“The new majority in the House has told us that their decisions are guided by two principles: first, loyalty to the Constitution; and, second, a belief that the government is too large and too intrusive. Well, here’s their chance to act on these principles, because the Patriot Act provisions we are voting on today represent Big Brother at its creepiest and most invasive. They are a clear violation of the Fourth Amendment, ‘The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.’

Mr. Speaker, for close to a decade now we’ve been told that our civil liberties must be shredded in the name of a so-called war on terrorism. We’ve been told that the national security imperatives of the moment are so great and so different than any we face in our history that we must submit to roving wiretaps and that we must empower the government to retain ‘any tangible thing’ related to a terrorism investigation. ‘Any tangible thing’–that gives the government pretty broad discretion to ferret out just about whatever they want. It is an invitation to overreach and abuse. I believe it has stifled freedom more than it has advanced it.

There is a real incoherence to an approach that says we have to do violence to our Nation’s values in order to protect them. Benjamin Franklin’s words are just as powerful today as they were more than 200 years ago when he said, ‘Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.’

I believe we must let these provisions expire. And let’s not stop there. Let’s move toward a fuller debate about civil liberties and national security, a debate that revises and ultimately repeals the Patriot Act.”