Over the weekend I was glued to the screen watching C-SPAN - ignoring exhortations from friends and family that I “get a life”. There were two important legislative battles going on. One involved the Patriot Act and the other the USA Freedom Act. The debate over these two pieces of legislation shed additional light on the battle that is raging within the Republican Party over constitutional issues.

For now, it appears that three contentious and controversial parts of the so-called Patriot Act will be allowed to expire. Credit (or in some circles, blame) is being attributed to Senator Rand Paul (R-KY). Meanwhile the battle over the USA Freedom Act continues.

The most contentious part of the Patriot Act, according to CNN, “is the government’s sweeping powers under Section 215 that allow the NSA to collect telephone metadata on millions of Americans and store that data for five years. That is, for the time being, gone”. Also allowed to expire were the roving wire taps (as opposed to having to obtain individual warrants) and the so-called “lone wolf” provision that allowed the government to use “national security tools” against a suspect with no known connection to a terrorist group (a provision that the Justice Department has acknowledged that has never been used) also expired.

However, according to Electronic Frontier Foundation and conservative blog The Hill, the USA Freedom Act reinstates them - with the exception of government collection of phone metadata - but that is only a cosmetic change. While the legislation prohibits the government from collecting the data directly, it gives the government the power to compel phone companies and/or ISPs to provide the data to the government. It’s a distinction without a difference.

Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI) was one of the original sponsors of the USA Freedom Act. However, in a post on his Facebook page, Amash explained why he no longer supports the bill, “I was and am proud of the work our group, led by Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, did to promote this legislation, as originally drafted. However, the revised bill that makes its way to the House floor this morning doesn’t look much like the Freedom Act….It claims to end ‘bulk collection’ of Americans’ data only in a very technical sense: The bill prohibits the government from, for example, ordering a telephone company to turn over all its call records every day. But the bill was so weakened in behind-the-scenes negotiations over the last week that the government still can order—without probable cause—a telephone company to turn over all call records for…’phone calls made east of the Mississippi.’ The bill green-lights the government’s massive data collection activities that sweep up Americans’ records in violation of the Fourth Amendment”.

According to Amash, “The bill does include a few modest improvements to current law. The secret FISA court that approves government surveillance must publish its most significant opinions so that Americans can have some idea of what surveillance the government is doing. The bill authorizes (but does not require) the FISA court to appoint lawyers to argue for Americans’ privacy rights, whereas the court now only hears from one side before ruling.

But while the original version of the Freedom Act allowed Sec. 215 of the Patriot Act to expire in June 2015, this morning’s bill extends the life of that controversial section for more than two years, through 2017”.

On C-SPAN I watched as Senator Dan Coats (R-IN) rambled on about the USA Freedom Act. He chastised those who were concerned about, as he put it, “big government this and big government that”. Really? Republicans are should no longer be concerned about big government? He seemed to think that that the FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) Court was an adequate protection of civil rights. However, it operates in secret and the public is barred from access to its decisions and operations. A court that operates in secret and is not accountable to the public sounds like something that that operates somewhere other than America.

Advances in technology now make it possible to store every telephone conversation of every American on a hard drive in a government facility. If we back up all of the data on our hard drives to the cloud, is the NSA entitled to have access? Common Core includes a data mining component that provides for government tracking of a student from cradle to grave. So-called “smart meters” work both ways - allowing for government or corporate control over our energy usage while collecting data about that usage.

I would respectfully point out to Senator Coats that his home state of Indiana has been a leader in fighting against “big government” intrusions with regard to our individual liberty and dignity and our right to privacy. Indiana has repealed Common Core. Its regulators have rejected Duke Energy’s request for funding for “smart meters”.

Regarding big government intrusion and monitoring of every facet of our lives, everywhere you drive in Maryland there are cameras that monitor your speed. In West Virginia, law enforcement can force you to take a blood test at the mere suspicion that you have consumed a forbidden substance - no warrant required. According to the American Chemical Society, on their website, “The war on drugs could get a boost with a new method that analyzes sewage to track levels of illicit drug use in local communities in real time. The new study, a first-of-its-kind in the U.S., was published in the ACS journal Environmental Science & Technology and could help law enforcement identify new drug hot spots and monitor whether anti-drug measures are working”.

That led one website to wonder whether a chip might be implanted into every toilet to do a drug test with every flush. From speed cameras to smart meters to smart toilets. Hey, the government already mandates what kind of toilet you can buy in California and those low water consumption toilets mandated in San Francisco caused tremendous problems in their public sewage system.

Recently Governor Chris Christie (R-NJ) said “You can’t enjoy your civil liberties if you’re in a coffin.” According to CNN, “The chief Republican sponsor of the Senate bill to reform the Patriot Act…Utah Sen. Mike Lee called those comments ‘tantamount to political pornography’ and said Christie ‘should be ashamed of himself’ “.

That pretty much sums up the current divide within the Republican Party. The establishment Republicans vs. the Republicans for traditional American values like individual freedom, personal privacy and liberty. President Obama has come down firmly on the side of the Republican establishment with regard to these issues. Go figure.

With regard to Christie’s comments, I would remind him that we recently observed Memorial Day. On that day we remembered and honored those that can no longer enjoy their civil liberties because they wound up in a coffin defending our right to enjoy those civil liberties. To honor their sacrifice it is incumbent upon us to ensure that it wasn’t in vain. To paraphrase Benjamin Franklin, those that would trade their civil liberties for security, wind up with neither. And I might add, that is what they deserve.