Change: Democrats Lovin' the Patriot Act Now

And here I thought most Democrats hated Patriot Act.

Turns out they only hated George W. Bush. Shocking!

WASHINGTON (AP) — Over fervent but scattered objections, the Senate voted by a wide margin Thursday to extend the government’s Patriot Act powers to search records and conduct roving wiretaps in pursuit of terrorists, acting just a month after intelligence and military forces hunted down Osama bin Laden.

Facing a midnight deadline when three terror-fighting tools would expire, the 72-23 Senate vote came after three days of stubborn resistance from a single senator, Republican freshman Rand Paul of Kentucky, who saw the terrorist-hunting powers as an abuse of privacy rights. With the Senate vote, the bill was whisked to the House for an evening vote and transmission to President Barack Obama for his signature.

The measure would add four years to the legal life of roving wiretaps – those authorized for a person rather than a communications line or device – of court-ordered searches of business records and of surveillance of non-American “lone wolf” suspects without confirmed ties to terrorist groups.

The White House gave assurances that the provisions would not expire even though Obama is now in Europe.

“Failure to sign this legislation poses a significant risk to U.S. national security,” White House spokesman Nick Shapiro said.

“As long as Congress approves the extension, the president will direct the use of the autopen to sign it,” Shapiro said in reference to an automatic signature machine used at the White House.

Obama will be woken up at 5:45 a.m. so he can review and approve the bill and then authorize his signature.

Hold on a sec...somebody has to actually wake Obama up in the morning?

Does he get a tuck-in at night too, I wonder?

FBI Using Broad New Wiretap Method

Let the freakout begin. The levels of paranoia with the nutroots will increase exponentially.

The FBI appears to have adopted an invasive Internet surveillance technique that collects far more data on innocent Americans than previously has been disclosed.

Instead of recording only what a particular suspect is doing, agents conducting investigations appear to be assembling the activities of thousands of Internet users at a time into massive databases, according to current and former officials. That database can subsequently be queried for names, e-mail addresses or keywords.

Such a technique is broader and potentially more intrusive than the FBI's Carnivore surveillance system, later renamed DCS1000. It raises concerns similar to those stirred by widespread Internet monitoring that the National Security Agency is said to have done, according to documents that have surfaced in one federal lawsuit, and may stretch the bounds of what's legally permissible.