Now is the time to act, and I commend Chairman Leahy for his leadership on the issue.

I do want the ability of courts to review, and that is why I will keep pushing on the State Secrets Act that we have pending right now before the Committee.

I begin with the idea that we Americans have a right to know what our Government is doing.

I think we are starting to see the results of that training and trying to inculcate these ideas, and I think we are making progress every day.

I know my discussions with him when he was in the Senate and my discussions with him since he became President tell me that.

I do want to commend both Tom Harkin and Saxby Chambliss for the way they have switched hats back and forth.

I am delighted to see you here. You are a true daughter of rural America.

Senator Leahy and I sent a letter to the President along with 14 of our colleagues urging him to conduct a thorough review of U.S. policy in cluster munitions.

They didn't follow the statute. It is one thing to talk about oversight and all that and the reauthorization, but the statute is not followed and it is a concern.

Congress has seized the initiative here.

I think that is why you have a lot of Americans on the right and left who are worried about intrusive and unchecked government surveillance.

I mean, your letter says you support oversight.

They are unequivocal about the administration's position that we are still at war with Al Queda and that these provisions should be reauthorized because they are important tools in this war and to make America safe.

The bill I introduced this week, the USA Patriot Act Sunset Extension Act has a 4-year sunset in all the three expiring Patriot Act provisions similar to what we did in 2001 and again in 2005/06 reauthorization.

In the 2006 USA Patriot Act Reauthorization, we required, and I helped write this, the Attorney General to adopt procedures to minimize retention and improper dissemination of private information.

the improvements that have been proposed by Senator Feingold and by Senator Leahy are so important.

We can safely say those fears did not materialize.

We all want to be safe. We all want to catch criminals. That is not the issue.

Minimization procedures are supposed to protect the constitutional rights of all of us.

It is only fair and common sense and reasonable that we have at our disposal abilities that have existed for decades to pursue drug dealers and mobsters.

I introduced a bill with Senators Cardin and Kaufman that aims to strike the kind of balance the administration urges.

I worked with Senator Specter and we were able to expand public transparency in congressional oversight--but in the end several important checks and balances were not included in the final version.

I commend the Attorney General, I commend him very highly for working with us and shaping these approved policies and procedures.

Given the misuse of the NSL authority that was seen in the Inspector General's 2007 report, I thought it was time to take another look at the authority.

I do believe that this committee after 9/11 fulfilled its responsibility by carefully scrutinizing every single word in it to make sure that there were no abuses of constitutional rights of our citizens.