The chairman of the House Judiciary Committee refused Thursday to accept a Senate decision to extend expiring provisions of the Patriot Act for six months, giving his approval only to a much shorter five-week extension.
The House tends to be more conservative than the Senate, so this is unusual.
From approx. 24 weeks to 5 weeks. This shows just how radioactive Bush has become that not even him pushing for this legislation does much good for it. And this is even a bigger failure for the neocons. The *REAL* opposition should gain strength from these many defeats the neocons have had in the past few weeks. Make them know their days are numbered, that they have failed and that we won’t back down. They already have our addresses, our emails, probably pictures of us, posts on blogs, etc., so lets rally more people against the war, so when they keep their lists and their numbers, they’ll list us in the hundreds of thousands, millions even!
I think you guys are misreading what happened. The extension was because James Sensenbrenner, chair of the House Judiciary Committee, wasn’t consulted and threw a hissy fit. He wouldn’t let the bill out of committee unless they agree to only a five-week extension. This seems to me to be nothing more than a powerful House member throwing around his weight because he’s pissed that he wasn’t consulted. THe Republicans now have plenty of time to get organized again and get a permanent extention of the sedition act together. Don’t for a second think that it’s necessarily a sign of weakness.
I also feel obligated to state that I don’t think even 25 million people in the streets would make a difference to this Congress. Bush already knows that more than 55 million people voted against him, and most of them dislike him intensely. He’s happy to rule with disciplined and narrow majorities, and aren’t like to be affected by street protests, particularly in the big and already blue cities.
Hmm, well Nixon said he wasn’t in the least affected by the Vietnam war protests. Buts, as it turns out, he was. Quite a lot too.
I thought is was Jay Rockfeller who went for the five weeks.