There's an unfortunate reality here which is that the Government can't really prevent terrorist attacks. Israel is much smaller and they've tried much harder and they can't prevent them so the U.S. stands very little chance.
So another attack will happen some day. It's a given (and both the Bush and Obama administrations have said as much)
That's where the Patriot Act comes in. Every politician believes it would be the death of their career if they change or reject the existing law only to have that inevitable terrorist attack take place right after. And given how irrationally people act after an attack the politicians are probably right.
So we're stuck with the Patriot Act until politicians become brave or the public stops acting irrationally after an attack. I won't be holding my breath.
This is not a new phenomenon: JFK even wrote a book about it, titled "Profiles in Courage": The book profiles senators who crossed party lines and/or defied the public opinion of their constituents to do what they felt was right and suffered severe criticism and losses in popularity because of their actions. [1]
So sometimes the right thing to do is the unpopular thing. But that's not new. While democracy is great at preventing certain abuses of power which clearly hurt the populace at large. Hence, it is also good at preventing violent uprising. So while it comes up with good solutions to some problems, the democratic process we have doesn't come up with the right solution to every problem, terrorism being a good example. This notion is much older than JFK, of course. One purpose of the Bill of Rights was explicitly anti-democratic: put in a general way, it prohibits the majority from oppressing inherent rights of minorities.
In theory, it is the role of the courts to strike down such laws as unconstitutional. In practice, this doesn't seem to happen very quickly, Japanese internment serving as one historical comparison [2]. But the sky has not fallen, former transgressions were greater, and like them, this too, shall pass.
What is novel about the current political climate in the US, as far as I can tell, is the extent of the influence money has in politics, and the magnitude of such money being spent. The best chronicle of this I've read is "So Much Damned Money" [3]. This is a problem worth fretting over.
So much damned money that someone apparently bought the rights to the ancient word "corruption" and prevents people from using it. It's bad for business.
For the record, the United States interned first generation Japanese-Americans, Italian-Americans and German-Americans. They were still denied due process which is definitely unfortunate, but they weren't interned because of the color of their skin. I think that is what a lot of people hint at by always mentioning the Japanese internment, but not mentioning Italian or German.
The internment of these German-Americans almost certainly saved American lives by denying the German American Bund Party (Nazi Sympathizers) from being able to engage in espionage and sabotage.
Furthermore, I have a problem calling them internment camps considering how completely different they were from the kind of internment camps the Nazi's ran.
> Israel is much smaller and they've tried much harder and they can't prevent them so the U.S. stands very little chance.
Actually, Israel has mostly prevented them. They still get rockets shot at them (which they probably could stop if they didn't have any ethical constraints), but suicide bombings have mostly stopped, and not for lack of attempts.
More accurately, the government can prevent terrorist attacks, but that will take sophisticated and unpopular foreign policy measures. The Patriot Act, security theater, war, and other such nonsense is easier to sell to voters and lobbies.
I think the implication above is that you can't prevent _every_ terrorist attack. I think that's a pretty defensible argument to make.
Geography alone makes it pretty obvious that you can't stop a determined group from carrying out an attack. So that leaves making nice with those groups so that they don't want to attack us.
Given the fact that there are radical groups at either end of just about any political or religious spectrum you can think of, the idea of appeasing all of them is nuts. The very actions necessary to appease one group could incite another to attack.
This is, of course, putting aside the idea that the motivation behind some violence isn't motivated by our actions at all, but rather by internal politics within extremist groups. There are a lot of folks out there who are awfully fond of power, and one of the easiest ways to garner power is to rally people against a common enemy (who cares if that "enemy" actually instigated anything... that's easy enough to spin)
So, all that to say... We're never going to prevent every terrorist attack, we can only work to minimize the collateral damage. In my opinion, the Patriot Act is just about the biggest example of collateral damage we've seen resulting from terrorist attacks, and I'm saddened to see that Congress chose to do nothing to limit that.
Use of violence to further political agenda is hardly a new phenomena. The straw man argument puts forward the "terrorist" as a new kind of threat to society which, alas, forces the good people hired by the internationals to represent the people to throw out the baby and bath water of "Inalienable" Rights, Due Process, Rule of Law, and civilized norms so that (apparently completely incompetent) security apparatus can prevent cave men with box cutters defeating the security envelope of the United States of America (aka the "empire" LOL).
"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
Dear framers, your posterity does NOT deserve the "Blessings of Liberty". Now, respectfully, why don't you roll over cause that is the only revolution that USA and your posterity can muster at this point.
Actually those measures are popular among regular (meaning non-powerful) people. Both the left and the right are in favor of a non-interventionist foreign policy in the US.
I don't really get this. How many people can name their representatives or senators? My guess is about 10%. If they don't know who you are, they can't blame you for terrorist attacks.
(I know, your opponents and the media can blame you. Just mention something about how you're against gay marriage, or something, and people will forget all about terrorism...)
They know who their senator is after his opponent starts flooding the airwaves with "$SENATOR name voted against protecting american citizens" overlayed against video of a terrorist attack.
But they do that anyway. There is always a hot button issue, and your opponent always voted against it.
Bush deserted from the military and used cocaine, and that didn't affect his presidency at all. So there is probably some factor other than voter outrage here.
And anyway, the Patriot Act has very little to do with terrorism. Let's not let idiots run our country.
It's a little late for that, isn't it? Our politicians are concerned with image, vanity, and self-service much more than the substance of anything that actually gets passed.
Unfortunately, there's a lot of problems similar to that also. The national debt, for example. No one will elect a politician that says "I'm going to work to cut government programs and raise taxes so that we can pay off our debt."
And given how irrationally people act after an attack the politicians are probably right. So we're stuck with the Patriot Act until politicians become brave or the public stops acting irrationally after an attack.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Benjamin Franklin
After TARP passed in the midst of one of the largest protests of a congressional action that I've witnessed in my life is anyone surprised? The Congress care about increasing the power of the government and doing whatever it is they want to do when they're in power. They like the new powers when they are in power and criticize them when they are out of power. Though the Neocons just criticize how much they are used rather than their existence so I guess they're more consistent.
I wonder when the small government conservatives will leave the Republican party and when the anti-war, pro civil liberties liberals will leave the Democratic party?
I think Barack Obama did a masterful job of pacifying the anti-war left by annoying his intention to withdraw from Iraq after a certain period of time. I don't know that it will actually happen but it was a pretty smart move to get it off of people's minds for the most part.
We don't have a two party system but we have a bi-factional ruling coalition. I wonder how long it will be before more people realize this.
After TARP passed in the midst of one of the largest protests of a congressional action that I've witnessed in my life
I guess you weren't alive in 2003 for the Guiness world record largest protest in human history against the Iraq war, including 400,000 in New York, 200,000 in SF, etc
Of course the difference is that tea partiers are upstanding Real Americans while the Iraq war protesters were dirty fucking hippies so they don't count.
This is a pretty poor comparison. You'd do better to cite a Congressional action that turned out to be a bad idea, like the Iraq War. When you cite TARP you're actually saying "the public is dumb and doesn't understand economics," which is a pretty accurate assessment, but not the one you were trying to make.
TARP probably saved us from a Great Depression, and IIRC the bailouts are in the black except for the segments bailing out the government mortgage banks and the car companies. FTR, the protests against Volcker's anti-inflation measures in the 70s were bigger, with farmers eventually blockading the Fed headquarters with their tractors. The protestors were wrong then, too.
> Oh really? How did forcing "loans" on Wells Fargo and other banks that didn't need money save us from anything?
Part of the force in economics is psychology. If enough people think the dollar will crash then it will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. I don't know if you were paying attention when, after Congress first rejected TARP, the stock market shot down severely again. There are many people out there that believe the dollar will crash - something Ron Paul has warned for a long time, long before our current economic crisis (a big reason for his sudden popularity). Many people still believe it's not a question of if but when. The scary thing is just how much everything flipped upside down, and Dr. Paul went from "kook" to genius, while at the same time Warren Buffet tells us he also noticed the shift, while attending a birthday party of well-to-do friends, where many started asking if their money-market investments were safe: "When people who drive Rolls-Royces are worrying about their piggy banks, you know you've got a problem" - Warren Buffet (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126056572135687829.html)
> I don't know if you were paying attention when, after Congress first rejected TARP, the stock market shot down severely again.
The stock market isn't the economy. Its moves now are somewhat independent of "life on the street". (That was even more true during the great depression.)
> There are many people out there that believe the dollar will crash
The dollar has weak for almost 10 years. It didn't and hasn't moved much.
I didn't suggest the stock market is the economy, but it is an important cog within our connected financial system. The key to my argument is in my first sentence about psychology. Did you read the WSJ article I linked to? Another quote from Buffet in the article: "I felt that this is something like I've never seen before, and the American public and Congress don't fully understand the gravity of the problem" General Motors needed to be rescued, and there are millions out of work, yet these items have little association with Bear Sterns, AIG, Wall St. etc., the financial institutions where the damage shook the pillars of our economy which rests upon the financial system and the dollar. The point being things are connected; significant trouble in one area knocks into the other, and you get a domino effect. The dollar is no longer backed by anything but promises, and people accept it because of our superior position as an economic and world power - even with all our escalating debt. However, we are not invincible (as Rome was not) and can experience a dollar crash if, as I said, enough people begin to think the dollar based system will not survive due to stress load (debt for bailouts/stimulus, future medicare). It's true the dollar has been fairly consistent for about a decade, and that's because our standing in the world has remained so - people still die to get in. However, a truer measure of faith in the dollar is the price of gold 10 years ago vs. today - $280 vs. $1080 respectively.
> Buffet in the article: "I felt that this is something like I've never seen before, and the American public and Congress don't fully understand the gravity of the problem"
Do you really think that Buffet has a "sense of the people"?
> General Motors needed to be rescued
No. General Motors needed to go into bankruptcy and have all of its contracts broken.
> and there are millions out of work, yet these items have little association with Bear Sterns, AIG, Wall St. etc., the financial institutions where the damage shook the pillars of our economy which rests upon the financial system and the dollar.
You're babbling.
> The point being things are connected
Yes, but that doesn't tell us that TARP was a good idea.
> The dollar is no longer backed by anything but promises
That's nothing new and TARP did nothing to change it.
> It's true the dollar has been fairly consistent for about a decade, and that's because our standing in the world has remained so - people still die to get in. However, a truer measure of faith in the dollar is the price of gold 10 years ago vs. today - $280 vs. $1080 respectively.
The price of the dollar relative to other currencies tells us the relationship between the US and other countries. The price of gold is a combination of absolute value and general skepticism.
Note that TARP didn't address any of that.
You do remember TARP. You're trying to argue that it was necessary. Yet, you've only mentioned generalities that are independent of TARP.
It's a bit too soon to be saying TARP was a good piece of legislation. It's also a bit of fantasy to say what would have happened if TARP hadn't passed.
The thing is, TARP hasn't led to any reforms in the financial sector. It simply shoveled taxpayer money at private corporations with very few strings attached, which propped up the banks long enough to say "hey, thanks, we would have been fine anyway, really, now piss off".
I think we'd be a lot better off without TARP. Your smug "the protestors were wrong" is unjustified.
The Great Depression was not caused by a sudden catastrophe but rather a crawling plague of failures that was reinforced every time the snooty holier-than-thou politicians living in Congress and the Fed refused to lend a hand to banks, even ramping up regulatory requirements in mid-crisis.
Nobody knows what would have happened for the current crisis, but history suggests attitudes like yours are not a good idea. The last thing we need right now is a nation of Hoovers.
I agree that we don't need any more Hoovers but that's all we have. If you read about the scope of Hoover's interventions into the American economy in 1929 after the crash until he left office you wouldn't suggest that he left the economy alone or did too little.
> The last thing we need right now is a nation of Hoovers.
I suggest that you re-read your history. Hoover was a progressive and was ramping up deficit spending and production controls. FDR ran against those policies but did a 180 when he got into office and basically just did more of the same.
That war on production is what made the great depression great. It didn't really end until WWII made it untenable - you can't have an empty arsenal of democracy.
Indeed. The banks paid TARP back very quickly. I imagined it was going to be something that would take place over 30 or 50 years, but it happened in a matter of weeks. Not a bad investment on the government's part -- they might have even made some money!
I think this misses a lot of points. For every person that lost money in savings accounts and smart investments (me), there is another person that got to buy their home with 4% financing instead of the 8 or 10%. So if your article wants to count losses from low interest rates, it should also offset them against gains from cheap loans. (Also, TARP probably didn't have much to do with this. It just meant that the name on your bank account stayed "Bank of America" instead of "Bank of the United States of America".)
> "I wonder how long it will be before more people realize this."
It is not in the interest of the ruling elite for this fact to become apparent. They control education and media, and have mastered the art of dividing society along various (ultimately facile and irrelevant) fault lines.
(Do you remember when Blue and Red state meme suddenly appeared out of nowhere like a cheap ready-made knockoff hanging in every one of our various media outlets? Is it a surprise that every time the country finally starts focusing on a substantial issue some completely random troll topic is pushed on queue; is the biggest problem facing USA the decision to allow gay marriage or to rescue this sinking ship of a state?)
"We don't have a two party system but we have a bi-factional ruling coalition."
You take that sentence and run it by a random sampling of 18 year olds in America. A certain proportion may be able to parse it; a subset of that may actually understand what is said; an even smaller subset would be able to reason about the proposition. Am I being completely pessimistic for thinking that the percentage that can even understand that as English is in single digit percentile?
How so many people in the comments thought that it was the actual Facebook login page, as it was (temporarily) Google's #1 hit for "Facebook login?" Well, have a look at their english. The grammar, the underlying argument structure, the confused-awkward lololols, the lot of it.
That's the majority of people in the US. Most adults stopped during or after high school. Remember high school? Remember the attitudes of students going through history & government courses? That's where they stopped, that was their final set of saved data on the matter.
And worse, they're still much better off -- even intellectually -- than many times their numbers across the planet: sustenance farmers, laborers, tribespeople, etc. (I'm speaking as someone born on the same land that my family spent centuries sustenance farming). A good portion of the human population's still living in the mode Ghandi called "more like animals than people." (rough quote from memory, sorry).
We're in agreement. However I'm not sure if you see this as an 'organic' phenomena (i.e. most people prefer to be mindless cattle that is educated only to the minimal extent necessary to be functional production units) or (as I do) as a systemic policy driven elite project to shape the human society. They haven't exactly been quiet or secretive about it.
The current elite clearly think that a systemic leveling across the board (aka domesticating the people identified by Ghandi) and homogenization is the only way to address the inherent contingent (your context) and intrinsic (your genetics) differences between humans.
My experience (obviously a tiny sample) is that the distribution is not smooth and quite lumpy, actually. I am not yet convinced that people generally prefer to be misinformed and deceived, and live lives of animals as opposed to a beings primarily distinguishing themselves by their possession of minds.
I do remember High School and do remember the history and government teachers (History: leftist progressive; Government: (presumed) future Bush voter). I remember (as memorable "learning" events) the woven tie of the history teacher and his half-hearted efforts to inject a bit of reality into the official version, and, the episode where the government teacher discussed "Deep Throat"[] with a flirting jock in class. No, I did not live in the ghettos among the disadvantaged and downwardly mobile; this is somewhere in a suburb around Washington DC -- the "Empire's capital" what a joke -- circa early 80s. in a county that likes to boast of the exceptional concentration of the highly educated amongst its residents. (Boggles the mind.)
[edit: The movie not the source. In any event, the film in question was actually "The opening of Misty Beethoven" ...]
I see it as people not caring about the truth as much as trying to be happy & safe. If that involves lots of accepted lies & illusions, then so be it. The mind's purpose is to assist the body in achieving darwinian goals -- knowing the truth of the world around them isn't terribly relevant. In parallel, those taking advantage of this situation aren't likely to spend much time thinking hard about it -- it works, that's all that matters. Justifying actions that bring you financial success is an art form driven over millennia of evolution & refinement.
Ha! I grew up in Springfield, VA, mid-late 90s for high school.
We don't have a two party system but we have a bi-factional ruling coalition.
Great choice of words. I love how it applies equally well to the USA and China. I agree, of course, and think it applies to most modern democracies, in whom I have zero faith.
It's not really surprising if you consider the options that were available:
1) Renew the current law. No real upside for any legislator, but no significant downside.
2) Reject the current law. Very little upside: the doves, paranoids, libertarians, and tea party activists who might actually care about this options are insignificant minorities within the electorate. Significant downside: it opens a legislator up to all sorts of "<insert incumbent name here> is making it easier for terrorists" attack ads regardless of the actual merits of the argument.
3) Amend the current law. An effort which would have needed to start a while ago. With enough bi-partisan support this could have limited the downside risk and enabled supporters to make the sort of "we are being smart about protecting ourselves form terrorists while protecting liberties" arguments that would have electoral upside, but given the current legislative climate it would have been a hard task to get the early defectors form the status quo which would have provided a bit of momentum.
"2) Reject the current law. Very little upside: the doves, paranoids, libertarians, and tea party activists who might actually care about this options are insignificant minorities within the electorate. Significant downside: it opens a legislator up to all sorts of "<insert incumbent name here> is making it easier for terrorists" attack ads regardless of the actual merits of the argument."
If you haven't noticed, the Republicans and their mainsteram media lapdogs are going to attack the Democrats as being "weak on national security" and "weak on terrorism" no matter what they do.
If they want not to be attacked at all, they should just stay completely out of politics.
Of course, they should pick their battles, and fight the ones that are really important. It's obvious from their inaction on and even outright support of the PATRIOT Act, that civil liberties just aren't that important to them, no matter what their rhetoric might be.
The same has been true regarding their "opposition" to torture, to the Iraq war, to Bush's Supreme Court nominees, their support of the "public option" for health care, etc. The Democrats have shown very little spine on these matters, when it comes time to walk their talk. And the public is noticing. That's why Congress has such a low approval rating, and why the shine is wearing-off Obama.
Their spinelessness and willingness to be the Bush-lite party could cost them dearly in the mid-terms and 2012. They're just lucky the Republican party is tearing itself apart with their "tea party" splintering and fighting over who are the "real conservatives".
> Their spinelessness and willingness to be the Bush-lite party could cost them dearly in the mid-terms and 2012.
The republicans could pick up some disaffected democrats as single issue voters on hot-button topics. But the social conservative agenda that the republicans are married to is fairly distasteful to people who regularly vote democrat - even if the parties are 95% identical in practice.
Of course, they should pick their battles, and fight the ones that are really important. It's obvious from their inaction on and even outright support of the PATRIOT Act, that civil liberties just aren't that important to them, no matter what their rhetoric might be.
It isn't just that it isn't important, many of them actively oppose it.
Joe Biden's opinion on the patriot act: "I drafted a terrorism bill after the Oklahoma City bombing. And the bill John Ashcroft sent up [the patriot act] was my bill..."
If you haven't noticed, the Republicans and their mainsteram media lapdogs are going to attack the Democrats as being "weak on national security" and "weak on terrorism" no matter what they do.
Of course they were going to get attacked on that point. What matters is if there is a public perception about a candidate or party that the attacks can use as leverage to rise above the level of standard electioneering and actually influence a voter.
The Democrats have shown very little spine on these matters, when it comes time to walk their talk. And the public is noticing. That's why Congress has such a low approval rating, and why the shine is wearing-off Obama.
You have obviously confused these people with some idealized version of the world that you imagine might have existed -- they were elected and get to do what they want to or are able to do, not what you want them to do. They are all doing pretty much what they campaigned on and what would be expected of them given the circumstances.
"They are all doing pretty much what they campaigned on and what would be expected of them given the circumstances."
You must be joking. Did Obama withdraw all combat troops from Iraq? Did he close Guantanamo? Where are all those "green jobs" he promised? Funding nuclear power plants doesn't exactly qualify. What exactly has he done that was promised during the campaign? From what I can see he's backpedaled or even completely flip-flopped on what he promised.
But it's not just about Obama. The Democrats have been heaping on the rhetoric to seem like an opposition party during the whole Bush term, but when it came time to actually vote against his policies they virtually always caved (with social-security being the only notable exception) and voted along with Bush and the Republicans, whether it was on the funding of the Iraq war, or on the PATRIOT Act, on torture, on habeas corpus, on wiretapping, etc.
It's not some "fantasy" that they were against these things. They were, in word. But when it came time to act on their rhetoric they caved.
Now that the Democrats are in power, they have more of a chance to effect change than ever. But what are they choosing to do with that chance? They're choosing to support and extend Bush's policies (by keeping the Iraq war going, by expanding the war in Afghanistan, by fighting to keep innocent people in jail without trial, by continuing to send prisoners to be tortured in other countries, etc..).
This outrageous behavior is not making them any fans, except among the neocons, who have heaped much praise upon Obama's cabinet nominees, and must be very pleased with what they've accomplished.
I don't know why anyone pretends that these people actually care anymore. They're there to get money and power, and to make sure they can get it again when they go up for re-election. They want to be everything to everyone, which leads to big problems because you can't do one thing without pissing off someone, so then they do the other thing too, but in amounts just enough that neither side will freak out too much, and just so that the Reps can claim to support whatever suits their campaign.
Take the health care bill, for instance. It doesn't do anything helpful, just forces everyone to pay for a private insurance policy. Republicans can say they protected business, Democrats can say they reformed health care and everyone now has access, businesspeople stay happy and their money keeps pouring in, normal people are hoodwinked into believing their side did whatever it was they wanted, and this cycle perpetuates.
Maybe I'm a defeatist but Patriot Act or no Patriot Act I believe they're just going to do this stuff anyway. These intelligence organizations aren't really held accountable often to the public for their actions. Just look at all the shady stuff they've done over the decades -- and that's just the stuff we know about. Who knows what really goes on inside the NSA or CIA? If they're out to get you I really doubt laws are going to save you. We know for an absolute fact this stuff was happening before the Patriot Act was law. Who went to jail? Was the President who permitted it held accountable? Nope. Were a significant number of the Representatives and Senators who voted for the Patriot Act expelled from office by voters? Nope. Maybe America is getting what it deserves. It looks like civil liberty violations are going to have to get much worse before Americans turn off their TVs and put down their Big Macs and actually care about the issue. The solution won't be so simple as repealing the Patriot Act either.
The Patriot problem isn't going anytime soon. The levels of surveillance enabled by modern technology were going to get used, somehow, by governments.
Counterterrorism is just the manifesting justification of this inevitability.
The debate on privacy -- or more accurately, the debate on the inflection point between real safety vs real privacy -- will be long and hard. It's a complex question that hasn't had an answer settled by any means.
My guess is that it's going to take a lot of work by folks like Wikileaks and the courts to make understood how the power is really being used. Only after a few cycles of (massive-problem -> privacy regulation) are we going to see some rational work in this area.
Sadly this is probably the only way it can happen; there just isn't any real data on what levels of privacy are appropriate with a civilization built on current levels of cyber-interconnection.
It took me a while, but for anyone else who is interested this explains a bit why it's hard to find the voting record http://bit.ly/92Qfz4 and this is the roll call for the vote which also shows the break down for each party http://bit.ly/cVkRiC
Despite what you might think, Democrats and Republicans both want a powerful federal government. The Democrats want a powerful government where citizens have the right to give the government a lot of money for social programs, and the Republicans want a powerful government where the citizens have the right to give the government a lot of money for wars. Pretty much the same.
Perhaps I'm just reading you wrong, but I'm going to have to disagree with you on this one. :)
Neither party pushes for the right to give — their ideas are funded by borrowing and taxation. A right is a choice, and taxes are involuntary.
There is a clear philosophical difference between Democrats and Republicans regarding the role and size of government, but of course, whether or not these differences play out in practice in a consistent manner is another story.
The politics of war is simply a game of public opinion.
For example, here's a video of Sen. Clinton (D) arguing for the invasion of Iraq (without citing Bush intel): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYATbsu2cP8
Yes, I mean this very sarcastically. Liberals (like myself, I'm as far left as you can get, basically) think that Republicans are Pure Evil and that the Democrats are sent by God to fight those evil forces. In reality, they're all politicians, and they and their friends come before their constituents. I think a lot more Democrats are doing the right thing in general, so I'm willing to support them, but I also realize that they are causing plenty of problems.
A government-by-jrockway would look very different than our current system.
It might be a failure of courage by our representatives; or maybe there are too many irons in the fire to get this done right. Not necessary to conjure up conspiracies, plenty of ordinary human reasons for this to take too long.
So another attack will happen some day. It's a given (and both the Bush and Obama administrations have said as much)
That's where the Patriot Act comes in. Every politician believes it would be the death of their career if they change or reject the existing law only to have that inevitable terrorist attack take place right after. And given how irrationally people act after an attack the politicians are probably right.
So we're stuck with the Patriot Act until politicians become brave or the public stops acting irrationally after an attack. I won't be holding my breath.