Bush assails Democrats over Patriot Act

WASHINGTON — President Bush accused Democrats Tuesday of blocking a full reauthorization of the USA Patriot Act for political reasons, as the White House stepped up an aggressive campaign to defend the president's terrorism-fighting authority.

"For partisan reasons, in my mind, people have not stepped up," Bush said, sitting at a table in the Roosevelt Room with federal officials and 19 U.S. attorneys from around the country. "The enemy has not gone away; they're still there, and I expect Congress to understand that we're still at war and they've got to give us the tools necessary to win this war."

White House spokesman Scott McClellan, speaking to reporters earlier in the day, said Senate Democrats are simply doing the bidding of liberal special-interest groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union, which opposes the broad surveillance power authorized by the act.

The Patriot Act, which Congress voted to extend until the end of this month amid a bitter political dispute over its reach, provides the federal government with broad power to monitor and prosecute terrorism suspects and those helping them. Many Democrats and a few key Republicans oppose the act as written because they say it does not provide adequate civil-liberty protections for innocent Americans.

The Patriot Act is expected to dominate the debate when Congress returns and to serve as a backdrop for a broader, and possibly even more contentious, argument over Bush's anti-terrorism policies.

The White House is bracing for a heated dispute over both the Patriot Act and the recent revelations that Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency (NSA) to monitor communications within the United States involving terrorism suspects overseas. Congress is planning hearings on the NSA program later this month and another vote on the Patriot Act early next month, when the current extension expires.

Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., said Tuesday that Bush should spend more time negotiating the Patriot Act with Democrats and others on Capitol Hill and less on "staged meetings with hand-picked participants" at the White House.

"Contrary to the president's misleading comments, nobody wants to see the Patriot Act expire," Feingold said. "We want common-sense changes to the act that would give the government the power to combat terrorism while protecting the rights and freedoms of law-abiding citizens."

Meanwhile, the Justice Department said Tuesday it will seek the dismissal of lawsuits from more than 300 Guantánamo Bay detainees fighting the legality of their confinement, using a new law that the Bush administration says sharply limits existing challenges.

The measure, part of the Defense Appropriations Act that Bush signed last week, was intended to allow detainees at the U.S. naval base in Cuba to appeal their detention status and punishments to a federal appeals court in Washington. That avenue replaces the one tool the Supreme Court gave detainees in 2004 to fight the legality of their detentions: the right to file habeas corpus lawsuits, which demand that the government justify a person's continued imprisonment, in any federal court.

The new provision won broad support only after its chief Democratic sponsor, Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, said it had been altered so it would not apply to pending cases.

But on Tuesday, the Justice Department notified judges at U.S. District Court in Washington that it will ask them to dismiss 187 cases involving more than 300 people because the law eliminates the jurisdiction of district courts to consider the legality of detentions at the naval base.