House Votes to Extend Patriot Act Provisions

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/15/us/politics/15terror.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=house%20votes%20to%20extend%20patriot%20act&st=cse

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Tue, Feb 15, 2011 at 10:45 AM
Subject: re: House Votes to Extend Patriot Act Provisions
To: letters@nytimes.com


To the Editor:

    This week, America applauds the Egyptian people, who rejected thirty years of "Emergency Law", under which they enjoyed no Constitutional guarantees.  We should do as well ourselves. As long as "National Security Letters" exist, our Constitutional freedoms exist only by the grace of our Executives, to be suspended at will and in secret. This nation was founded on the premise that people have inalienable Rights that apply in good times and bad. For our Senate to renew the "Patriot Act" and therefore the National Security Letters would be to perpetuate an abomination. A government that claims such powers deserves to be overthrown, in Washington no less than in Cairo.

Barry Levine