The House of Representatives on Tuesday rejected a measure to extend through December three expiring provisions of the Patriot Act, the national security legislation passed in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

A coalition of liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans – both concerned about civil liberties  – came together to defeat the proposed extension on a 277-to-148 vote. Twenty-six Republicans voted with 122 Democrats against the measure, while 67 Democrats and 210 Republicans supported it. Ten members did not vote.

Without congressional action, the three controversial provisions will expire on Feb. 28. The provisions are “roving wiretaps” that follow a terrorism suspect’s changing use of phone and Internet records, a “lone wolfâ€� provision allowing law enforcement to track a target that doesn’t have an affiliation with a specific group, and so-called Section 215 orders allowing investigators to freely gather a suspect’s business records.

The White House backs a measure by Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) for an extension that would last until December 2013.

The ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), opposed the House extension and urged his colleagues to vote no. In an official statement, he called the Patriot Act “one of the worst laws” passed in Congress and said the bill’s provisions “would authorize extraordinarily intrusive acts by the executive branch.”

Republican Sens. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader; Charles Grassley of Iowa, the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, the top GOP member on the Senate Intelligence Committee, called for a permanent extension of the provisions instead.

But Tea Party leader Sen. Rand Paul, the newly elected Kentucky Republican, said he’s “had a lot of reservations” about the law and hasn’t decided whether he’ll vote to extend it when the Senate acts on the measure, likely later this month. Paul’s father, libertarian leader Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), opposed the Patriot Act when it was first approved in October 2001 and voted against the extension on Tuesday.

Three Republican Senate leaders introduced a measure late Thursday that would permanently extend three key provisions of the Patriot Act, rather than let them expire not quite three years from now, as an alternative Democratic proposal would do.

The Republicans — Sens. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader; Charles Grassley of Iowa, the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, and Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, the top GOP member on the Intelligence Committee — described the changes as vital to national security.

“These three provisions are essential tools for our counterterrorism agents in the field.  The threat of terrorism isn’t going away so we must provide our agents with the tools they need to get the job done,â€� Grassley said in a prepared statement.  “Given that terrorist threats, including those from self-radicalized individuals, continue to evolve, we must ensure that our law enforcement agents are not burdened with new restrictions on existing authorities.  We can’t afford to go back to a pre-9/11 mindset and tie the hands of our agents in the field.”

The measures at issue are roving wiretaps of terrorism suspects through phone and Internet records, the “lone wolfâ€� provisions that can track a target regardless of affiliation with a specific group, and Section 215 orders allowing investigators to freely gather a suspect’s business records.

The provisions would otherwise expire on Feb. 28. Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) introduced an extension that would last until December 2013 for these three provisions last Wednesday.

The Senate will now debate which approach it will take on the Patriot Act, which has been at the center of a debate over how to balance national security against the right of privacy since it was enacted just weeks after the terrorist acts of Sept. 11, 2001.

President Barack Obama on Saturday signed into law legislation that would temporarily extend three controversial provisions of the Patriot Act that had been set to expire.

The House took final congressional action on the measure on Thursday, voting 315-97 to keep in place the Patriot Act’s “lone wolf,� business records and “roving wiretap� powers until Feb. 28, 2011. The Senate had passed the bill by voice vote Wednesday night.

Here is a summary of the provisions that were due to expire:

• Lone wolf: Allows the government to track a target without any discernible affiliation to a foreign power, such as an international terrorist group. The provision applies only to non-U.S. persons. The government has never used it.
• Business records: Allows investigators to compel third parties, including financial services and travel and telephone companies, to provide access to a suspect’s records without the suspect’s knowledge.
• Roving wiretaps: Allows the government to monitor phone lines or Internet accounts that a terrorism suspect may be using, regardless of whether others who are not suspects also regularly use them. The government must provide the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court with specific information suggesting a suspect is purposely switching means of communication to evade detection.

John Ashcroft (photo by Ryan J. Reilly)

Former Attorney General John Ashcroft got a mixed reaction at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Friday, where some libertarian-leaning attendees booed his anti-terrorism policies, arguing they had violated the privacy of American citizens.

“There’s nothing honorable about taking away peoples’ rights,” shouted a woman in the crowd. Ashcroft responded that his time was up and he thought that woman’s was, too.

President George W. Bush’s first Attorney General received a standing ovation for his speech, but at other points, Ashcroft was jeered. One crowd member called him a fascist.

Today, Ashcroft told The Huffington Post that it was right to Mirandize suspected terrorists arrested on American soil. “When you have a person in the criminal justice system, you Mirandize them,” Ashcroft said.

His defense of the criminal justice system went against the current line of attack by President Bush’s last Attorney General, Michael Mukasey, who has been critical of Attorney General Eric Holder’s decision to put the alleged Christmas Day airplane bomber in the civilian justice system rather than in military custody.

During his speech, Ashcroft said, “We have the duty, from time to time, to respond [to terrorists] with the mechanisms and capacities of war rather than put our heads in the sand and think that we’re not at war or fail to consider whether we’re at war because we’re so in love with the vocabulary of the civil-justice system.�

He also said that a “range of opportunitiesâ€� need to be available to deal with terrorists. He did not rule out the use of civilian courts – which the DOJ under Ashcroft and other Bush administration leaders used frequently to prosecute alleged terrorists and terrorism-related offenses.

Ashcroft was presented with the “Defender of the Constitution Award” in the afternoon. The introduction from radio host Scott Hennen was a bit incongruous, given Ashcroft’s position on those arrested on American soil. “Sadly, elections have consequences, and now we have Eric Holder and Mirandizing terrorists,” he said.

Ashcroft later came out to conclude a debate moderated by Jay Sekulow of the American Center for Law and Justice on the topic of whether security trumps freedom.

Panelists Bob Barr, a former U.S. attorney and Republican member of Congress from Georgia, and Jim Gilmore of the Free Congress Foundation represented the libertarian view. Rep. Dan Lungren (R-Calif.) and Viet Dinh, a former Assistant Attorney General who served as an architect of the Patriot Act, defended the mechanisms in the name of security.

“We ought to be very careful, very careful about what we do in defense of this country,” said Ashcroft. “We ought to recognize that the courts of the United States do oversee us, and they have the final word, and I don’t think that there are any things in the United States Patriot Act that aren’t supervisable by the judicial branch of the United States.”

On his way out of the speech, Ashcroft posed for photos with members of the armed forces but ignored questions from reporters and declined to take a pamphlet offered to him by a man wearing an Obama Joker mask.

Video of Ashcroft’s speech is available at C-SPAN. It starts about 66 minutes in.

Main Justice’s Video of John Ashcroft’s speech after the debate is embedded below.