Hatch takes heat over Patriot Act

WASHINGTON — The political right and left are turning up the heat on Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, all with an eye toward pressuring him to take committee action on legislation to correct ill-intended consequences of the Patriot Act.

On Tuesday, the American Civil Liberties Union, the American Conservative Union, the Libertarian Party of Utah, the Utah Progressive Network, the Utah League of Women Voters and the Citizens Education Project took out full-page ads in the Deseret Morning News and Salt Lake Tribune, as well as newspapers in Alaska, Wisconsin and Washington, D.C., urging readers not to "confuse the Patriot Act with patriotism."

The ad specifically asks Congress not to include any expansions of the controversial Patriot Act in any legislation to implement recommendations of the 9/11 commission.

"Commitment to the Constitution should transcend political ideologies," Dani Eyer, executive director of the ACLU of Utah, said in a press release announcing the ad campaign. "The right and left don't often agree, but when they do it's because of their commitment to preserve freedom and liberty. Senator Hatch must listen to the millions of Americans who demand that we be both safe and free."

The pressures comes as Congress is debating a number of bills intended to improve the nation's capability to thwart terrorism. Competing bills are working their way through the House and Senate.

But it is one bill, called the Security and Freedom Ensured Act (SAFE), a bipartisan measure sponsored by an Idaho Republican and an Illinois Democrat, that has not been scheduled for a Judicial Committee action that has the right and left calling on Hatch to take action.

The bill calls for changing certain Patriot Act provisions that opponents have long said jeopardize constitutionally guaranteed freedoms. The ACLU cites, for example, one section that allows the FBI to obtain Americans' medical, business, library and genetic records without probable cause, and another that allows federal agents to search homes without notifying them for a certain period of time.

But Hatch, who has chaired public hearings on the Patriot Act, remains wary of changing the law, especially if it means shackling terrorism investigators with restrictions not required in other criminal cases.

"It seems to me that we should not make it any harder to go after suspected terrorists than after suspected drug dealers," Hatch said during a committee hearing last week.