Angie Craig: “I have come to the floor, as my colleague from Illinois did a few moments ago, to talk about the USA PATRIOT Act and…”

“I have come to the floor, as my colleague from Illinois did a few moments ago, to talk about the USA PATRIOT Act and where we are with this issue that the American people have recognized as important for a variety of reasons. We all know that following the attack on American soil on September 11, 2001, we produced the USA PATRIOT Act to allow the law enforcement and intelligence communities of this country to move forward and do a variety of things. For the first time, we stepped into some arenas of law that many citizens of our country looked at at the time and said, be careful if you go there for you may well be intruding upon what are fundamental and constitutional rights of privacy with the American people. I voted for the PATRIOT Act at that time, and I did so speaking to the fact that I thought it was necessary that we move expeditiously to allow our law enforcement community to operate for the purpose of national security. I said at that time that this was not a perfect law. In fact, 253 communities and 37 States later, representing approximately 43.5 million people, have passed resolutions opposing or expressing concern about the PATRIOT Act. Groups as politically diverse as the ACLU and the American Conservative Union endorse changes in the law.”