Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe, Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand refused to take a stand for Americans’ constitutional rights this year, but they’re working hard to defend the integrity of pancake syrup. Seriously, they think that distinguishing between Aunt Jemima and maple syrup is more important than protecting the privacy of American citizens.

H.R. 1981 isn’t necessary. The government has proven that it already has what it takes to find child pornographers and bring them to justice. There’s no need to treat us all as if we’re child pornography suspects, and keep all Americans under constant watch from Big Brother.

Only one senator on the Select Committee on Intelligence had the courage to vote against this unconstitutional legislation – and we can have no idea who that senator was. Though the committee thinks that it’s a good idea for the federal government to snoop inside our personal emails and listen in on our private telephone calls without a search warrant, the committee also thinks that it’s none of the public’s business to know which of the senators on the committee has voted to approve this alarming intrusion.

H.R. 1981 would require the linkage of all our online activities to our names and other personal information. This, in turn, would enable government intelligence agents to search through its massive databases of online activities, collected under the FISA Amendments Act, by citizen name, address or telephone number.

Jeff Merkley explains why he defended the effort by senators to reform the Patriot Act through amendments to the Patriot Act extension bill crafted by John McConnell and Harry Reid.

There was a cloture vote on S. 1038, the legislation crafted by Senator Harry Reid and Senator John McConnell to extend the unconstitutional spying of the Patriot Act for four more years. Only 8 senators had the courage to vote in opposition to the big government spying program.

Without any public debate, and without any significant concessions from the House Republicans, Harry Reid and John McConnell introduced S. 1038, the PATRIOT Sunsets Extension Act of 2011. The legislation will extend the most abusive spying powers of the Patriot Act, which were actually supposed to expire years ago, given their extreme nature, for three and half more years.

After the markup of the Patriot Act was finished, Quigley went ahead and voted in favor of the renewal of the Patriot Act with none of the gun control provisions that he said were so necessary. He made a big deal about how crazy it would be for anyone to support such legislation, and then, he supported it.

Yesterday’s markup was an opportunity for reform of the abusive law, with amendments that could have brought the Patriot Act closer to compliance with the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment guarantee of protection from unreasonable search and seizure. Yet, every single reform that was offer was rejected by the House Judiciary Committee.

There’s more evidence than ever that the Patriot Act spying powers are being misused, but Congress is moving toward renewing the unjust law anyway.