On the recordMay 25, 2011
I know Senator Blumenthal is coming to speak and Senator Kerry ended a little bit early. I wish to get up for a couple minutes now, and when Senator Blumenthal comes in I will yield to him because he has some time reserved. I wish to talk this morning a little bit about the procedure and what we have gone through, in terms of the PATRIOT Act. I am very discouraged to see the path we are headed down in terms of the PATRIOT Act. I was in the Congress, as the Presiding Officer knows, when we voted almost 10 years ago on the PATRIOT Act. It was a sad occasion then because it was right after 9/11 and that horrible tragedy had happened to our country. But we rushed, in a very big way, to move forward with a piece of legislation, the so-called PATRIOT Act. That act ended up being something I think many of us regret. I wish to read a short passage from the Washington Post at the time, which I think showed the haste in which we acted, where we infringed on our constitutional rights, and I think the Post says it all. They noted: Members of both parties complained they had no idea what they were voting on, were fearful that aspects of the . . . bill went too far--yet voted for it anyway. I can tell you that, at the time, that is the way it was. We were on the floor, we had the vote, and nobody knew what was in the bill. I remember one Congressman waiving a copy of the bill, saying there is only one copy on the floor and it is hot off the Xerox machine.…
