Some lawmakers on Capitol Hill, in pursuit of votes regardless of safety implications, continue to pound away at the commander-in-chief on life-and-death issues in wartime. Republican National Committee is fighting back with TV ads this week that have caused a howl of protest from the Democrat party.

The nine major Democrat presidential candidates hope to make political hay out of the second thoughts, on both sides of the aisle, on the post-9/11 Patriot Act.

Afraid to Talk

As NewsMax.com has reported, however, it was Daschle, at the urging of then Senate Banking Chairman Paul Sarbanes, D-Md., who was responsible for inserting into the Patriot Act enhanced government powers unrelated to terrorism. After repeated requests from NewsMax to their offices for comment, Dashcle and Sarbanes have refused to address the issue.

The Department of Justice argues there are instances where money-laundering investigations (the issue covered in the part of the bill inserted by the two senior Democrats) can also lead to nailing terrorists.

Civil libertarians will argue, though, that once those floodgates are opened, the powers bestowed on government authorities by this law can be used on almost any pretext.

That in fact appears to be the case in Las Vegas, where the FBI used the Patriot Act to seize the financial records of local officials in a political corruption case. There is not the slightest indication that this investigation, involving a strip-club owner and allegations of bribery, has led or ever will lead to terrorism.

The Las Vegas Sun on Nov. 4 quoted FBI spokesman Jim Stern as saying, “A section of the Patriot Act was used appropriately by the FBI and clearly [is] within the legal parameters of the statute.” That part of the law, Section 314, can fairly be labeled the Daschle-Sarbanes section.

The Patriot Act, aimed at protecting Americans from terrorists who want to kill them, has stirred an uproar that crosses the usual political boundaries. There is a raging debate about it among conservatives, some fearing a jackboot abuse of power. Others give more weight to the threat to innocent lives from terrorists.

While conservatives wrestle with their consciences over these gut issues on which reasonable people can disagree, some Democrats who helped write law and who voted for it are hypocritically using the controversy for partisan one-upmanship.

'Skeptical'

According to an AP dispatch dated Nov. 10, Daschle said that “while he’s not ready to support repealing the Patriot Act, he is skeptical of the way it’s been used by the White House and said there is ‘a lot of concern about the assault on civil liberties.’” He has had nothing to say about the Vegas case despite requests by NewsMax for his comment.

The senator’s attempt to position himself to jump either way on a law he helped to write fits right in with remarks that former Vice President Al Gore delivered before the left-wing group Moveon.org, originally formed to shield Bill Clinton from impeachment. The 2000 loser urged President Bush to rescind the entire law, even though it resembles what Gore himself had proposed.

Just as the Patriot Act is a bipartisan legislative product, so too is the current effort to amend it with in the Craig-Durbin SAFE bill, as reported by NewsMax. But 2004 looms, and the Senate minority leader, as many Hill watchers see it, is proving once again that “bipartisan” in Daschle-speak means Democrats get the credit and the GOP gets the blame.