[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 20 (Thursday, February 16, 2006)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1375-S1376]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            USA PATRIOT ACT

  Mr. ISAKSON. Mr. President, within the hour, we will cast our votes 
on whether to proceed on the debate on the extension of the PATRIOT 
Act, which I intend to vote for, both to proceed and then finally for 
that act.
  I rise this morning to reflect on my strong support for the PATRIOT 
Act and also express some of my frustration with those who have 
questioned its use with regard to our civil liberties.
  I was born in the United States of America in 1944. I am 61 years 
old. The inalienable rights endowed by our Creator that our forefathers 
built this Government on, of life and liberty and the pursuit of 
happiness, have been the cornerstones of my life. They are the 
foundation of all our civil liberties. They allowed me to pursue a 
business career, a marriage, the raising of a family, the educating of 
children, and allowed me to proceed to the highest office I could have 
possibly ever imagined: a Member of the Senate. Because of God's 
blessings and the blessings of this country, last week I was blessed 
with two grandchildren, born 61 years after I was but into a country 
that still is founded on the cornerstones of the great civil liberties 
of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
  But Sarah Katherine and Riley Dianne, my two granddaughters, were 
born into a totally different world--the same country but a different 
world.

[[Page S1376]]

Today, terror is our enemy, and it uses the civil liberties that we 
cherish to attempt to do us harm; in fact, to destroy us. In fact, the 
freedom of access to communication, to employment, to travel, even to 
our borders, are the tools and the weapons of those who would do our 
civil liberties harm and in fact take them away. Because of this, do we 
give up our civil liberties? Absolutely not. But because of this, we 
must watch, listen, and pursue our enemies with the technologies of the 
21st century. The PATRIOT Act does not threaten our civil liberties. It 
is our insurance policy to preserve them.
  We obviously must be diligent with anything we give Government, in 
terms of a tool or a power to communicate or to watch or to surveil. 
But do we turn our back on everything we cherish and that has made us 
great out of fear we might lose it when, in fact, it is our obligation 
to protect it? We are in the ultimate war between good and evil. Our 
enemy today, terror, is unlike any enemy we have ever had. All our 
previous enemies wanted what we had--our resources, our wealth, our 
ingenuity, our entrepreneurship, our natural resources, our money, our 
wealth. Terror doesn't want that. Terror doesn't want what we have. 
Terror doesn't want us to have what we have. They don't want me to be 
able to speak freely in this body and speak my mind, or my constituents 
in Georgia to do the same, even if what they say is diametrically 
opposed to me. They don't want me to freely carry a weapon and defend 
myself. They don't want a free press that can publish and write its 
opinion. They don't want any of the inalienable rights and the 
guarantees and the civil liberties that we have because they know it 
stands against the tyranny and the control and the suppression that 
their radical views have brought to a part of the world.
  This place you and I call home and the rest of the world calls 
America is a very special place. You don't find anybody trying to break 
out of the United States of America. They are all trying to break in. 
And they are for a very special reason. The civil liberties and the 
guarantees of our Constitution and the institutions that protect our 
country--the reasons that you and I stand here today.
  While I respect the dissent of any man or woman in this Chamber about 
the PATRIOT Act, I regret that we have delayed our ratification of the 
single tool that turned us around post-9/11, in terms of our ability to 
protect our shores and our people.
  I remind this Chamber and everyone who can listen and hear what I am 
saying that when the 9/11 Commission reviewed all that went wrong prior 
to 
9/11, it recognized that what went right post-9/11 was the passage of 
the PATRIOT Act. It acknowledged, without our ability to connect the 
dots, we could not protect the country.
  Once again, I cherish our civil liberties. I see the PATRIOT Act not 
as a threat to them but an insurance policy to protect them. As we go 
to a vote in less than an hour, I encourage every Member of the Senate 
to vote to proceed and then debate, as we will, the issues and the 
concerns. But in the end, we should leave this Chamber, today or 
tomorrow, sending a message to those who would do us harm and sending a 
message to those whom we stand here today to preserve and protect, that 
we will not let any encumbrance stop our pursuit of those who would 
destroy or injure us, our children or our grandchildren.
  At the end, at the age of 61 and with the opportunity to serve in the 
Senate, the rest of my life will be about those grandchildren. Riley 
Dianne Isakson and Sarah Katherine Isakson are less than a month old. 
They have a bright future. The PATRIOT Act is going to ensure that the 
very civil liberties that will allow them to pursue happiness to its 
maximum extent will still exist because America did not turn its back 
or fear our ability to compete in a 21st century of terror with the 
type of 21st century laws we need to surveil, to protect, and to defend 
those who would hurt or those who would harm this great country, the 
United States of America.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. BOND. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. BOND. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the order for the 
quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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