Patrick Leahy: “I will say to the minority leader, Mike Mansfield is a man who was my mentor and I will be speaking about him tomorrow…”

“I will say to the minority leader, Mike Mansfield is a man who was my mentor and I will be speaking about him tomorrow after the memorial service. But I say to the distinguished leader, he was my leader when I came to the Senate, and I think he probably had as much involvement in teaching me how to be a Senator as anybody. I will speak further on that at another time. I hope Senators would work with the distinguished majority leader and the distinguished Republican leader to help us schedule this legislation. I have tried to be accommodating, getting up at 3 o'clock this morning in Vermont to try to get back. Do I love this bill? Of course I don't love this bill, Madam President. But neither does the distinguished Republican leader. Neither does the distinguished ranking member. There is nobody in here who does. It is impossible to craft a bill of this nature that everybody is going to like. Does it protect us for all time from terrorism? Of course it does not. As I said earlier, I suspect we had information prior to September 11 in our files at the Justice Department that might have led to the apprehension and the stopping of the terrorists. That was information and intelligence that was acquired properly under the current laws. Will this protect us by itself? No. Will it give us some tools we don't have? Yes. This can be done in such a way that we ask ourselves, are we willing to try some of this for a while? Put constitutional limitations.…”