Egyptian Irony: President Obama asked Congress to extend our own Emergency Law: the PATRIOT ACT

[Better Believe It]

Egyptian Irony
by Davidson Loehr
February 11, 2011

While Mr. Biden was asking Egypt to repeal their Emergency Law two days ago, President Obama was asking Congress to extend our own Emergency Law: the USA PATRIOT Act. Some key parts were due to expire at the end of this month; Obama wanted them extended to December 2013. (The Republican-controlled House had proposed extending the Act to the end of this year.) The House rejected Obama’s extension by seven votes — most of the new Tea Partiers joined many of the Democrats to defeat it because of their concerns about the almost unimaginable threat such power represented to our civil liberties. Today (February 10th), the House voted to proceed, probably bringing it to a vote next week, when it is expected to pass.

The ironies would be funny if they weren’t so frightening. Capricious arrests, indefinite detention without due process, and the real possibility of torture and murder are now “legal,” to the extent that any government can legalize atrocities. The Emergency/PATRIOT Law/Act invites and guarantees political leaders spying on their own people, systematic revocation of civil liberties, and the tyranny of a government that rules its citizens rather than serving them. These are sketches of a de facto dictatorship in both Egypt and the United States. In Lily Tomlin’s famous line, “No matter how cynical you get, it is impossible to keep up!”

When citizens like those in Egypt, Tunisia and elsewhere feel free to act out against the duplicity and violence of their governments, it is often the kind of freedom that’s just another word for nothing left to lose. We recognize the spirit guiding those actions instantly: it’s the spirit that once inspired our own American Revolution 235 years ago. It’s the spirit of hope that must be turned into acts of moral defiance against abusive governments, or we may lose our rights, our power, and our humanity. Through the extension of our PATRIOT Act/Emergency Law, our President will retain the right to treat U.S. citizens in ways he so easily identified as tyrannical and inhumane if Egypt’s president does them. The painful irony of our leaders doing precisely what they forbid Egypt’s leaders to do can be reduced to a paralyzing cynicism, or it can be amplified into non-violent but unyielding action. As history has shown, however, only that latter route of defiant uprising can ever be looked back upon with any pride.

Read the full article at:

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/02/11-2

[fasttense]

1. The Egyptian people didn't let any laws stand in their way.

Day 18 and Mubarak is on the run.

[Better Believe It]

2. We should begin building mass movements here that are independent of the old parties and politicians

[RC]

3. Those same T-baggers would have would have no problem extending any provision of the Patriot Act if

one of their own were President. But we have a "far-left-wing-loony-liberal" with a (D) by his name for president, so they can't have that.

Maybe we can use them to repeal the whole unconstitutional act. Ya think?