Patrick Leahy actually said...

It is hard to understand why it took the President nearly three and a half years of a four-year term to send up the nominees.

But we also have to have meaningful checks and balances. We are going to safeguard our fundamental values as we try to secure the Nation.

I want our country to be protected, but I want our privacy to be protected, and I do not think those two concepts are contradictory.

Government works only if you trust it, and if people feel they cannot be trusted with information, then we do have problems.