Defense legislation renewed despite Feingold filibuster
Despite two filibusters and continued vocal insistence on the government's overreaching of its bounds, Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., was finally forced to concede defeat Thursday when the U.S. Senate voted 89-10 to renew the Patriot Act.
On Wednesday, the Senate voted 84-15 to end his filibuster after a 95-4 vote amending the bill.
I am deeply disappointed that we have largely wasted this opportunity to fix the obvious problems with the Patriot Act,\ Feingold said in a speech to the Senate before the vote.
The renewal came on the heels of a December standoff in which Feingold successfully delayed renewal to provisions of the act set to expire next week. Although some changes were made to the original act, to which Feingold was the lone objector in 2001, Feingold insisted the alterations were cosmetic and still left room for civil rights abuses.
""The reason I spent so much time in the past few days talking about how the public views the Patriot Act was to make it clear that this fight was not about one senator arguing the details of the law,"" Feingold said. ""This fight was about trying to restore the public's trust in our government.""
""Senator Feingold has been fighting a valiant battle on this one for a long time, and as we know, he was the only one to vote against it the first time, so the fact that nine other people joined him is something of an improvement for him,"" said UW-Madison political science professor David Canon.
However, Canon said the vote was unsurprising given concerns about terrorism many U.S. citizens have.
UW-Madison journalism professor Dietram Scheufele said the voting was primarily a political maneuver.
""I think honestly this is a vote where most of the senators in the Democratic Party had the 2008 elections in mind,"" Scheufele said. ""I think what we're seeing is really the Democrats trying to make an issue out of terrorism and potentially look good in the 2008 elections.""
Scheufele said the stratagem's success depended largely on who would run in 2008.
""I think if someone like Hillary Clinton survives the primaries, I think that strategy is not going to work very well,"" Scheufele said. ""I think that it would look very differently if the Democrats ended up running someone like Mark Warner, former governor of Virginia, pro-gun, pro-choice, someone who is a centrist, very similar to what Clinton was in 1992 […] I think that's when that vote may pay off.""
