Political Quotes

“4 years ago, following the most devastating attack in our history, this Senate passed the USA PATRIOT Act in order to give our Nation's law enforcement the tools they needed to track down terrorists who plot and lurk within our own borders and all over the world; terrorists who, right now, are looking to exploit weaknesses in our laws and our security to carry out attacks that may be even deadlier than those that took place on September 11. We all agree we need legislation to make it harder for suspected terrorists to go undetected in this country. And we all agree that we needed to make it harder for them to organize and strategize and get flight licenses and sneak across our borders. Americans everywhere wanted to do that. Soon after the PATRIOT Act passed, a few years before I even arrived in the Senate, I began hearing concerns from people of every background and political leaning that this law, the very purpose of which was to protect us, was also threatening to violate some of the rights and freedoms we hold most dear; that it does not just provide law enforcement the powers it needed to keep us safe but powers it did not need to invade our privacy without cause or suspicion. Now, in Washington, this issue has tended to generate into the typical either/or debate: Either we protect our people from terror or we protect our most cherished principles. I suggest this is a false choice. It asks too little of us and it assumes too little about America.…”