Patriot Act...it goes on and on and on and on...

For those visually oriented policy wonks out there, the Center for Democracy and Technology created a comparison chart of the Judiciary committee meetings in the House and in the Senate regarding the USA Patriot Act Susnet Extension Act. Check it out here.

The standards that are being looked at in section 215 regarding national security letters are the heart of the issue regarding libraries (this includes the business records provision involving libraries). While the ALA favors the House version of the bill because of the increased scrutiny on the use of the NSLs, the Senate version is the favored one that looks likely to pass. They extended the vote to the end of February, so in hunting around to see the result (THOMAS, etc) I found the following a la Senator Lieberman and politico.com:

"After a wave of news about attempted domestic terror attacks, Democrats facing a tough election year quietly voted this week to extend the Patriot Act legislation that many of them had decried under former President George W. Bush.

The House passed a one-year reauthorization of the Patriot Act Thursday night 315-9, just a day after the Senate moved the bill on a late-evening unanimous voice vote.

With the law facing a sunset date of Feb. 28, the Senate opted to vote for the extension of three crucial provisions of the act rather than opening debate on a revised bipartisan plan passed by the Judiciary Committee in October that would have imposed stricter privacy safeguards.

“In the end, it became non-controversial,” Chairman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) told POLITICO. “[There was] the growing concern about increase on the pace of attacks on the homeland… and frankly, I think the Patriot [Act] got a bad name under the Bush Administration.”

bad name indeed...