Russ Feingold: “we pass a lot of laws in this body, but most of them don't get any public attention. Not so with the PATRIOT Act. Few…”

“we pass a lot of laws in this body, but most of them don't get any public attention. Not so with the PATRIOT Act. Few pieces of legislation have the kind of public understanding and recognition the PATRIOT Act does. The PATRIOT Act has become a rallying cry for those concerned about Government overreaching, grabbing for more power than it needs, using a time of crisis to justify changes in the law it otherwise could not hope to see made. People all over the country want us to take a step back, to reconsider, to fix the PATRIOT Act. Perhaps the strongest evidence of this is that in the past 4 years, more than 400 State and local governments have passed resolutions opposing or objecting to various aspects of the PATRIOT Act. Eight of those government bodies are State legislatures that have already passed resolutions opposing the PATRIOT Act. In April 2003, Hawaii was the first State to adopt a statewide resolution. The next month, in May 2003, Alaska and Vermont passed resolutions. Over the course of 2004 and 2005, we saw three more resolutions in Colorado, Montana, and Maine. Finally, Idaho passed a resolution specifically to support the SAFE Act's amendments to the PATRIOT Act, and recently, on February 16, California passed a resolution on the PATRIOT Act. I will read these resolutions. There are eight such resolutions, Alaska being the first.…”