The Democrats in the Senate had the Patriot Act down on the ground, they had a knife to its throat, and what did they do? Why, they
threw away the knife, helped the supine thing to stand up again, brushed its clothes off, and invited it home to meet the family.
More prosaically, they extended it in exactly its present form for six months, when they could have let it expire and made the Republicans come back with a new secret-police act -- an act that would have hopefully faced more skepticism than the Patriot Act did, back in the days after 9/11 when Democrats and Republicans were trying to see who could be more hysterical.
Now, however, the Act represents the status quo and the Democrats will face the burden of painting a civil-liberties smiley-face on it.
Nice work, fellas.
