The USA Patriot Act, that musty relic of the last time a Republican president took advantage of a national trauma as cover for enacting a longtime authoritarian wish list, is up for renewal this week and, against all odds, Mitch McConnell and his band of vandals have found a way to make it worse. From Spencer Ackerman in The Daily Beast:

Under cover of redressing what President Donald Trump and his allies call the FBI’s “witch hunt” over collusion with the Kremlin, McConnell, via an amendment to the PATRIOT Act, will expressly permit the FBI to warrantlessly collect records on Americans’ web browsing and search histories. In a different amendment, McConnell also proposes giving the attorney general visibility into the “accuracy and completeness” of FBI surveillance submissions to the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Court. Versions of the amendments circulating Monday were shared with The Daily Beast.

Ackerman correctly points out that these amendments would pretty much guarantee the ability of an incumbent administration to spy on its political opponents without consequence. In addition, the second amendment would allow an attorney general to meddle in the FISA process to an extent even beyond the way he can now. And, of course, as in all things, we should remember that we are handing these powers over to this president* and his marionette attorney general—a parlay of pure, unmitigated authoritarian awful.

Respond to this post on the Esquire Politics Facebook page here.

Headshot of Charles P. Pierce
Charles P. Pierce

Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976. He lives near Boston and has three children.