Political Quotes

“shortly after 9/11 we came together on a bipartisan basis in Congress to try to make certain that terrible tragedy was never repeated. We worked on a bipartisan basis to give tools to our Government to fight terrorism, to upgrade the laws of the United States so our Government could stay ahead of the curve when it came to that threat. We understood then, as we do now, that those tools were necessary for our Government, and we understood as well that preventing terrorism is the most important and the most valid exercise of governmental responsibility. But we were concerned, concerned that at that moment in our history we were responding quickly, perhaps emotionally, to the threat and to the tragedy of September 11. So in the wisdom of both Republican and Democratic legislators, we included in the PATRIOT Act this new set of tools to fight terrorism, sunset provisions. We said: Four years from now we will take another look at it. We are going to try to decide at that point in time if we went too far because at issue here was not just fighting terrorism but our basic rights and liberties. Giving the Government more power over the people in this country may be necessary in some regards to deal with terrorism, but we should always do it carefully because our basic rights and liberties, as guaranteed by our Constitution and the tradition of our laws, are things we are all sworn to uphold and protect.…”