What happened to Change(tm)?

One of the very few great things that could have come out of Democratic control of Congress and the Obama Administration would have been rolling back the Patriot Act.  They say they are for protections from invasions of privacy, that violating civil liberties was a ‘failed policy of the Bush Administration.

Well, don’t hold your breath, they reauthorized it without significant changes.  Showing again this is about power and control, and neither party is really interested in giving any of that up.

What’s most frustrating?  In committee, there was bipartisan agreement to scale it back a bit.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., noted that the bill with privacy protections had been approved in committee by a bipartisan majority. He said the measure “should be an example of what Democrats and Republicans can accomplish when we work together, but I understand some Republican senators objected to passing the carefully crafted national security, oversight and judicial review provisions in this legislation.”

But they couldn’t get it through the entire body.