'Twas the Season for Congressional Patriot Games

The week leading up to Christmas saw a flurry of activity in Congress as lawmakers fought over reauthorization of the USA Patriot Act, which was set to expire at the end of the year. The battle was set when members of the House approved a conference committee report that a bipartisan group of U.S. senators believes does not do enough to ensure the privacy rights of U.S. citizens. Political maneuvering went down to the wire, but the result was a major victory for proponents of readers' privacy rights. A final reauthorization of the USA Patriot Act was postponed to give Congress time to include provisions to protect readers' rights.

At present, the House vote on Patriot Act reauthorization is scheduled for Wednesday, February 1. The vote in the Senate must take place before midnight on Friday, February 3.

For booksellers -- who, understandably, may have been too busy over the past few weeks to devote their full attention to anything other than holiday sales, here's a review of congressional action on the USA Patriot Act during the final weeks of 2005.

On Wednesday, December 14, the House approved a conference report that free speech proponents contended did not adequately protect readers' rights to privacy, and the stage was set for intense, down-to-the-wire debate in the Senate. On Friday, December 16, Sen. Bill Frist (R-TN), a supporter of the House version of the bill, attempted to end debate by passing a motion for cloture, but the result was a stirring victory for reader privacy advocates when 47 senators voted against the motion.

During the morning debate, a number of senators who were on the fence over whether to vote in favor of cloture said that a news story in today's New York Times -- which reported that the government authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop without warrants on hundreds to perhaps thousands of people in the U.S. -- did much to sway their votes.

With holiday recess looming the following week, opponents of the conference report looked to get the current Act extended for another three to six months, while Sen. Frist warned that President Bush would veto any extensions.

However, on December 21, the efforts of a bipartisan group of U.S. senators, led by Senators Russell Feingold (D-WI) and John Sununu (R-NH), postponed a final reauthorization of the USA Patriot Act. In a voice vote, the Senate approved a six-month extension of the Patriot Act, a step designed to give Congress time to craft a bill that includes stronger provisions to ensure the privacy of America's readers.

In a surprising move, late in the afternoon on December 22, the U.S. House of Representatives failed to agree to the compromise, passing a Patriot Act extension that would end on February 3, 2006. The voice vote followed the rejection of the Senate bill by Wisconsin Republican F. James Sensenbrenner, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.

A few hours later, the political gamesmanship finally concluded. In a near-empty chamber, the Senate by unanimous consent approved the U.S. House of Representative's last-minute changes to the Patriot Act reauthorization bill -- reducing the Patriot Act extension from six months to five weeks. The lone senator present was John W. Warner (R-VA), who presided over a four-minute session, as reported by the New York Times. President Bush later signed the five-week extension, which moves the Patriot Act's expiration date to February 3.

Despite the new timeframe, the sponsors of the Campaign for Reader Privacy (CRP) -- the American Booksellers Association, the American Library Association, the Association of American Publishers, and PEN American Center -- stressed that the objective of the campaign has not been altered by the new deadline.

"Our goal from the beginning has been to work to help ensure that the reauthorized Patriot Act protects the rights of readers. Regardless of whatever timeframe is passed by Congress, our goal is unchanged. We will continue to do everything we can to be certain that the final version is as protective of reader privacy as possible," stressed Oren Teicher, ABA COO, following the December 22 Senate vote. --David Grogan