Washington Times: Congress must repeal and replace the Patriot Act

This is very good.

Via The Washington Times:

The Patriot Act was fashioned with good intentions, but it has been dragooned to serve bad purposes. It was enacted during the national panic that followed the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 to protect Americans from the enemy. Now it’s employed by government busybodies to treat Americans themselves as the enemy.

Fed up with the abuse, certain lawmakers on Capitol Hill are pushing legislation to repeal the act. While we share their outrage, repeal without a workable substitute could leave the nation vulnerable to a new generation of evil. There’s surely a solution that preserves safety without trampling liberty. Congress must find it.

{….]

“The natural progress of things,” observed Thomas Jefferson, “is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.” Even he couldn’t have imagined a government capable of collecting almost every word written and spoken across the land. An individual’s right to the privacy of his expressed thoughts is his best defense against groupthink, the herd mentality that takes root when the people allow themselves to be hoodwinked by the crafty and the clever. Hillary Clinton’s keeping her emails private in ways others cannot is a reminder that the governing class always tries to figure out how to exempt themselves from the requirements they impose on others.

If Congress thinks the Surveillance State Repeal Act goes too far, as we do, it still must enact reform that restores the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition against warrantless searches and respects the distinction between the innocent and the suspicious. The war on terror must never become a war on liberty.

I find it very commendable that the Washington Times is taking a principled stance against the Patriot Act.