The Daily Blog

Rep. Tim Scott Floats Impeachment If Obama Invokes 14th Amendment On Debt Limit.

WASHINGTON — While some have asserted that the debt limit might be unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment, and therefore President Obama does not need congressional approval to raise it, Republicans have been quick to express skepticism over the idea. On Tuesday, a Republican congressman went a step further, saying that if Obama were to use that argument to bypass Congress on the issue, it would be an impeachable offense.

“This president is looking to usurp congressional oversight to find a way to get it done without us. My position is that is an impeachable act from my perspective,” said Rep. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) at a meeting sponsored by the Tea Party group LowCountry 9.12 Project on Tuesday, first reported by Lindsay Street on Summerville Patch.

His comments were met with enthusiastic applause.

“There are a lot of things people say, ‘Are you going to impeach the president over that?’ — No. But this? This is catastrophic,” continued Scott. “This jeopardizes the credibility of our nation if one man can usurp the entire system set up by our founding fathers over something this significant.”

Obama doesn’t appear to be looking at ways to “usurp congressional oversight” on the debt ceiling. During his Twitter town hall on Wednesday, the president was asked whether he would consider invoking the 14th Amendment to pay government obligations if Congress refuses to raise the debt ceiling.

Obama did not rule out such an option, but he did insist that the situation should not get to a place where such drastic measures would be needed.

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney has also said he’s not aware of any White House lawyers looking into the issue, although last week, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner mentioned the clause in the 14th Amendment that states U.S. public debt “shall not be questioned.”

On Tuesday, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) told The Huffington Post he thought the whole issue was “silly.” “I think it’s interesting to talk about, but I don’t think it’s sustainable as a legitimate position,” he said.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), meanwhile, has called the 14th Amendment solution “crazy talk.”

Supreme Court Violent Video Games Ruling: Ban On Sale, Rental To Children Unconstitutional.

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday refused to let California regulate the sale or rental of violent video games to children, saying governments do not have the power to “restrict the ideas to which children may be exposed” despite complaints about graphic violence.

On a 7-2 vote, the high court upheld a federal appeals court decision to throw out the state’s ban on the sale or rental of violent video games to minors. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Sacramento had ruled that the law violated minors’ rights under the First Amendment, and the high court agreed.

“No doubt a state possesses legitimate power to protect children from harm,” said Justice Antonin Scalia, who wrote the majority opinion. “But that does not include a free-floating power to restrict the ideas to which children may be exposed.”

The California law would have prohibited the sale or rental of violent games to anyone under 18. Retailers who violated the act would have been fined up to $1,000 for each infraction.

More than 46 million American households have at least one video-game system, with the industry bringing in at least $18 billion in 2010.

Unlike depictions of “sexual conduct,” Scalia said there is no tradition in the United States of restricting children’s access to depictions of violence, pointing out the violence in the original depiction of many popular children’s fairy tales like Hansel and Gretel, Cinderella and Snow White.

Hansel and Gretel kill their captor by baking her in an oven, Cinderella’s evil stepsisters have their eyes pecked out by doves and the evil queen in Snow White is forced to wear red hot slippers and dance until she is dead, Scalia said.

“Certainly the books we give children to read - or read to them when they are younger - contain no shortage of gore,” Scalia added.

But Justice Clarence Thomas, who dissented from the decision along with Justice Stephen Breyer, said the majority read something into the First Amendment that isn’t there.

“The practices and beliefs of the founding generation establish that “the freedom of speech,” as originally understood, does not include a right to speak to minors (or a right of minors to access speech) without going through the minors’ parents or guardians,” Thomas wrote.

Food Aid Cuts For Women, Children Passed By House Republicans.

WASHINGTON — The Republican-led House voted to slash domestic and international food aid Thursday while rejecting cuts to farm subsidies.

A spending bill to fund the nation’s food and farm programs would cut the Women, Infants and Children program, which offers food aid and educational support for low-income mothers and their children, by $868 million, or 13 percent. An international food assistance program that provides emergency aid and agricultural development would drop by more than $450 million, one-third of the program’s budget. The legislation passed 217-203.

The bill would trim the Food and Drug Administration’s $2.5 billion budget by almost 12 percent, straining the agency’s ability to implement a new food safety law signed by President Barack Obama this year. Democratic attempts to restore some of the food safety money were rejected.

As they cut other programs, lawmakers rejected two proposals that would have saved money by lowering the maximum amount of money a farmer can receive in subsidies from the government. While fiscal conservatives and other critics of subsidies argued that they need to be cut as lawmakers look for ways to save, farm-state members said those cuts should be pushed back until Congress considers a new five-year farm bill next year.

Democrats said the cuts to food aid were reckless and that farm subsidies should be trimmed instead.

“The Republican bill is harmful, ineffective and plays politics with our children’s health,” said Rep. George Miller, D-Calif.

Critics of farm subsidies did score one victory: The House voted to block a $147 million annual payment to Brazil’s cotton industry. The United States agreed to make that payment last year after Brazil’s industry complained to the World Trade Organization that Washington unfairly was subsidizing U.S. cotton farmers. The United States lost the WTO case and agreed to make the payments to Brazil as a settlement.

Rep. Ron Kind, D-Wis., who is a frequent critic of domestic farm subsidies, offered the amendment, saying the U.S. should lower domestic cotton subsidies to comply with the WTO instead of paying the settlement to Brazil. Kind was joined by fiscal conservatives who agreed the Brazil payment is wasteful.

“Let’s end this nonsense of stacking subsidy program on top of subsidy program to blackmail other governments,” Kind said.

In addition to making spending cuts, Republicans in the House used the legislation to express dissatisfaction with a number of Obama administration policies, including healthier eating initiatives championed by first lady Michelle Obama as part of her “Let’s Move” campaign:

The bill:

_Directs the Agriculture Department to rewrite rules it issued in January meant to make school meals healthier. Republicans say the new rules, the first major overhaul of school lunches in 15 years, are too costly.

_Forces USDA to report to Congress every time officials travel to promote the department’s “Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food” program, which supports locally grown food, and discourages the department from giving research grants to support local food systems. Large agribusiness has been critical of the department’s focus on these smaller food producers.

_Prevents USDA from moving forward with new rules that would make it easier for smaller farmers and ranchers to sue large livestock companies on antitrust grounds. The proposed rules are meant to address the growing concentration of corporate power in agriculture.

_Delays for more than a year new rules for reporting trades in derivatives, the complex financial instruments blamed for helping precipitate the 2008 financial crisis. A Republican amendment adopted Thursday would require the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which funded in the bill, to first have other rules in place to facilitate its collection of derivatives market data.

_Prevents the FDA from approving genetically modified salmon for human consumption, a decision set for later this year.

_Questions the scope of Obama administration initiatives to put calories on menus and limit the marketing of unhealthy foods to children.

The House bill would provide $17.3 billion for the day-to-day operations of USDA and FDA. The Senate has not released its version of the bill.

The agriculture measure is the third of 12 annual spending bills funding government operations for the budget year beginning Oct. 1. Republicans have promised to cut tens of billions of dollars this year as they tackle the annual budget process, in addition to trillions in cuts they hope to make across the government.

Heat Gripping Half Of U.S. Expected To Last For Days.

WASHINGTON — Sweltering temperatures across half the country had people doing what they could to stay cool Thursday. While relief was in sight after one more day of misery in the Northeast, the South was forecast to stay hotter than usual at least through the end of the week.

Some schools in the Northeast planned to close early for a second day Thursday so students would not have to suffer in buildings with no air conditioning. Others canceled classes altogether.

“A lot of people were complaining,” said Stephanie Poff, 12, a sixth-grader at an elementary school about 70 miles north of Philadelphia that sent students home early Wednesday. “It is hard to study when it’s hot out because all you’re thinking about is, `I wish I could be in air conditioning.”

In Tennessee, where temperatures in many cities have set records over the past few days, tens of thousands of music fans attending two different festivals were feeling the heat.

“I wasn’t prepared for this at all,” said Alberta Kelly of New Brunswick, Canada, who got sunburned and had to go shopping for sunglasses when she arrived in Nashville for her first CMA Music Festival, a major country music event. People also began arriving Thursday at a farm 60 miles southeast of Nashville for the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival, which runs through Sunday.

“We have more free water than we’ve ever had and we’ve put up shade structures,” said Rick Farman, one of the founders of Bonnaroo, which messaged attendees ahead of time about what to wear and drink and has set up air conditioned medical tents.

The six-to-10-day outlook from the federal Climate Prediction Center calls for continued above-average readings centered on the mid-South, including Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.

In the Northeast, the scorching heat was forecast to subside by Friday as a cold front sweeps in with cooler, drier air. High temperatures across the region are expected to stay in the low 80s through the weekend.

Meanwhile, “I’m staying in my house. I’m going to watch TV and have a cold beer,” said 84-year-old Harvey Milliman of Manchester, N.J. “You got a better idea than that, I’d love to hear it.”

Cooling centers opened in Chicago, Memphis, Tenn., and Newark, N.J., as a refuge for those without air conditioning.

“It will be a very dramatic change,” said Charlie Foley, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Taunton, Mass. “Even though the temperature will go down, the big difference that people will appreciate will be the lower humidity.”

Authorities say hot weather was so intense in southwestern Michigan that it buckled pavement on an interstate, forcing the roadway to close for a few hours Wednesday, according to the Battle Creek Enquirer.

If scientists are right, we’d better get used to the heat. A new study from Stanford University predicts that global climate change will lead permanently to unusually hot summers by the middle of the century.

Temperatures in the 90s were recorded across much of the South, the East and the Midwest on Wednesday. Baltimore and Washington hit 99 degrees, breaking high-temperature records for the date that were set in 1999, according to the National Weather Service. The normal high for the date is about 82.

Philadelphia hit 97 degrees, breaking a 2008 record of 95, and Atlantic City, N.J., tied a record of 98 set in 1999. Chicago reached 94 by midafternoon Wednesday, though highs were only forecast to be in the low 60s by Thursday.

Forecasters said it felt even hotter because of the high humidity, yet several southern states were also experiencing drought. The ridge of high pressure that brought the broiling weather is expected to remain parked over the region through Thursday.

In Oklahoma, where temperatures have reached 104 four times so far this month, the Salvation Army said more people are seeking help with high utility bills earlier in the season, and paramedics responded to more heat-related illnesses.

Authorities blamed the heat for deaths of five elderly people in Tennessee, Maryland and Wisconsin in recent days. Two men died in Wisconsin after they jumped into a river to cool off and got pulled underwater. Officials in Long Island, N.Y., reminded people to check on their relatives and friends, especially the elderly.

That is likely to continue in the coming month, with the hot weather extending west into New Mexico and Arizona. The three-month outlook shows excessive heat focused on Arizona and extending east along the Gulf Coast. Cooler-than-normal readings are forecast from Tennessee into the Great Lakes states.

At Stanford, Noah S. Diffenbaugh and Martin Scherer analyzed global climate computer models and concluded that by midcentury, large areas of the world could face unprecedented heat. They said the coolest summers will be hotter than the hottest ones of the 1900s.

Global warming in recent years has been blamed on increasing concentrations of gases such as carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The permanent shift to extreme heat would occur first in the tropics and reach North America, South America and Eurasia by 2060, the scientist report in a paper that will be published in the journal Climatic Change Letters.

It’s hard to stay cool at a baseball game, but Reds and Cubs fans were trying at Great American Ball Park in Cincinnati, which had issued a heat emergency.

Kathryn Burke, of Pikeville, Ky., wore a straw hat, brought two bottles of frozen water, and a portable mister.

“And I brought the knowledge to leave when I’ve had enough of the heat,” she said

Anthony Weiner Resignation Calls Mount From Both Sides In Wake Of Photo Scandal.

WASHINGTON — Embattled New York Rep. Anthony Weiner’s prospects for political survival dimmed precipitously on Wednesday with the appearance on the Internet of an X-rated photo said to be of the congressman – and the first calls from fellow Democrats for him to step down.

“In light of Anthony Weiner’s offensive behavior online, he should resign,” Pennsylvania Rep. Allyson Schwartz, a member of the party campaign committee’s leadership, said in a statement that was quickly followed by similar expressions from other Democrats.

Separately, as the political scandal increasingly roiled the Democratic Party, several officials said that Weiner’s wife, Huma Abedin, was pregnant. An official at the State Department, where Abedin serves as deputy chief of staff to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, had no comment. Abedin was traveling with Clinton on an official trip to the Mideast and Africa.

Weiner, 46, has admitted sending explicit photos and messages via the Internet to about a half-dozen women over the past three years. He vowed at a news conference on Monday to remain in office, and one lawmaker who spoke to him on Wednesday said Weiner indicated he still hopes to ride out the furor and remain in Congress. That lawmaker spoke on condition of anonymity, saying it was a private conversation.

But the appearance of a photo of a man’s genitals added yet another aspect to what appears to be a sex scandal without actual sex in the age of social media. According to conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart, Weiner sent the picture of himself to one of the women with whom he corresponded online.

The Associated Press has not been able to independently confirm that the photo is of Weiner. On Wednesday, spokeswoman Risa B. Heller noted in a statement that Weiner had said at a news conference on Monday that he “has sent explicit photos. To reiterate, he has never met any of these women or had physical contact with them.”

The photo made its way to the website Gawker by a circuitous route, after Breitbart showed it to the hosts of Sirius XM radio’s “Opie and Anthony Show.”

By day’s end Wednesday, at least six House Democrats had called for Weiner to step down.

Schwartz was the first, and politically the most significant because of her position as a senior leader on the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

Weiner’s predicament has rocked the Democratic Party, particularly the women who hold leadership posts and have faced a choice between calling for a resignation or hoping that refraining from doing so would lead him to quit without being told.

In the interim, few pass up the chance to signal to Weiner that he should step down.

The head of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, Sen. Patty Murray, told reporters during the day that Weiner’s troubles “of course” complicate the party’s efforts ahead of in the 2012 elections.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. said, “I just view it with great surprise and dismay. That’s all I can say.”

Feinstein and Murray were first elected to the Senate in 1992, the so-called Year of the Women that was a watershed in Democratic political history.

The party’s leader in the House, Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California has called for an ethics committee investigation to see whether Weiner’s actions violated any House rules.

Pelosi and the party’s chairwoman, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, declined to respond directly on Tuesday when the Republican chairman, Reince Priebus, urged them to say whether they believe Weiner should step down.

The Democratic National Committee has adamantly refused to comment, while a spokesman in Wasserman Schultz’s congressional office has said only that she supports Pelosi’s call for an ethics investigation. By contrast, the former Democratic Party chairman, Tim Kaine, has urged Weiner to quit. Kaine is running for the Senate in Virginia.

While declining to make any public comments since Monday, Weiner has been on something of an apology tour by telephone. He has contacted fellow House members and former President Bill Clinton, who officiated at the congressman’s wedding to Abedin nearly a year ago.

The officials who spoke about the telephone calls did so on condition of anonymity, saying they were private matters.

Anthony Weiner’s Survival Chances Deemed Slim By Insiders, Experts.

WASHINGTON — It was only fitting that the circus surrounding Rep. Anthony Weiner’s admission on Monday that he had, in fact, sent lewd messages to random females over Twitter ended with a lewd question referencing a wiener.

“Were you fully erect?” an apparent plant from a shock jock radio show shouted as the New York Democrat ended a painful apology news conference in New York City’s Sheraton Hotel.

Tent pole jokes aside, the inquisitor highlighted a remarkable fact: A man regarded as one of the smartest strategists in Democratic politics and a likely 2013 New York City mayoral frontrunner had fallen from the rising star to national punch line in less than a week.

And the embarrassing scandal inevitably raised the question of whether the career of a politician — even one as skilled as many thought Weiner was — could survive it. A quick poll of New York politicos and D.C. pundits found few saying he could. But they also noted a geopolitical factor that worked to his advantage: This is New York — stranger things have happened.

“He needs to have a multi-year commitment to a comeback strategy,” said Chris Lehane, a Democratic operative and oft-described crisis communications expert with experience in the Clinton White House. “I’d tell him that you have to realize it will take you multiple years to get back to the position you were in just a week ago.”

Weiner may realize that much. Indeed, the congressman vowed he would win back the trust of his constituents over time. But even in New York City that will be tough, requiring a sort of discipline that many who are familiar with Weiner do not think he possesses.

“He ought to have a goal about not thinking about a political renewal but a personal renewal. If he does anything that looks like he is trying to rehabilitate himself, that would be a terrible mistake,” said Lanny Davis, the crisis management guru who was brought into the Clinton orbit to handle the ex-president’s own lewd conduct. “The last thing he should be talking about is political rehabilitation. That is a terrible mistake. This is not about his political career.”

Austan Goolsbee, Top Obama Economic Adviser, To Resign.

WASHINGTON — The White House says Austan Goolsbee, a longtime adviser to President Barack Obama, will resign his post as the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers this summer to return to teaching at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business.

Goolsbee has been the face of the White House on economic news, and is a regular every first Friday of the month explaining the administration’s take on the latest jobless numbers.

Goolsbee served on the three-member economic council since the start of the administration. He advised Obama during his 2004 Senate race and was senior economic policy adviser during the 2008 presidential campaign.

He took over last September as council chairman, replacing Christina Romer, who left to return to a teaching position at the University of California, Berkley.

Obama Won’t Extend Bush Tax Cuts Again: Pledge To House Dems.

WASHINGTON — In a meeting with House Democrats on Thursday, President Obama stressed that his administration would draw a firm line on taxes and revenues both in the deficit- and debt-reduction debates and in the buildup to the 2012 elections.

According to multiple meeting attendees, the president reiterated on several occasions that a deal to raise the country’s debt ceiling would include revenue increases, even as Republican lawmakers insist that such a deal should be restricted to spending cuts and entitlement reforms.

“I’ve been very clear about revenues as a part of a balanced package, and I will continue to be,” said Obama.

Underscoring his commitment, Obama noted taxes would be a defining area of contrast with Republicans on the campaign trail. He insisted that he would not compromise again on his position that the tax rates for the top earners be raised to pre-Bush levels.

“‘Whatever we agree on, we are still going to have plenty to argue about in 2012,’” a senior administration official said, paraphrasing the president. “‘I’ve said I’m not going to renew the tax cuts for the top two percent. We might agree on tax reform or simplification, but on the upper-income tax cuts we are just going to have to agree to disagree.’”

Two House Democrat attendees confirmed the substance of those remarks. One of those lawmakers, who agreed to speak about the event on condition of anonymity, said that members were “worried that the Obama Administration would cave [in debt ceiling negotiations] because Republicans were willing to default on our debt if they don’t get what they want.”

The President responded by saying it was vital to have revenues as part of the mix, stressing that a budget can’t be balanced on non-defense discretionary spending or the “backs of the most vulnerable.” Obama added, according to the member, that, “he would not support extending the Bush tax cuts for the top two percent again no matter what hostages Republicans took.”

That line in the sand was greeted warmly by attendees, many of whom were disillusioned with the administration’s decision to cut a deal with congressional Republicans in December 2010 that allowed all of the Bush tax cuts to continue.

The politics now are notably different. As pressure has mounted for lawmakers to make major cuts, both to discretionary spending and entitlement programs, Democrats have turned to raising revenues as a partial budget substitute. As a Democratic source briefed on Thursday’s meeting relayed, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi was adamant that the party not cut Medicare benefits. A recent upset victory in New York’s 26th district has seemingly provided the party with the type of template to win the tax-and-spend debate.

At the Thursday White House meeting, newly-minted member of Congress Kathy Hochul (D-N.Y.) received an enthusiastic welcome. Addressing both the caucus and the president, she explained how she won the office not just by defending Medicare, but by speaking out about tax equity.

“She talked about how she had been attacked on taxes but won anyway,” said the senior administration official. “She said she would talk to small business owners about the fact that they pay a higher rate than General Electric.”

The tone of the more than hour-long discussion, the official said, was positive, with the president ending the affair by referring to the party as a “family.” Other attendees, however, said that the discussion was not without its points of friction.

As The Huffington Post’s Michael McAuliff reported, Obama largely rebuffed requests from congressional Democrats to be more forceful in deficit and debt discussions with Republicans, noting that the office he holds requires a more delicate touch:

“He was a little testy with the [Rep. Henry] Waxman question. Essentially, Mr. Waxman was urging him to fight more,” one legislator said. “The president reminded folks that he’s the president sitting in that chair and he knows how to negotiate.”

Obama also told the assembled Democrats not to count on more fiery rhetoric from the Oval Office.

“He said, ‘There’s a difference between me and a member of Congress,’” another lawmaker said, paraphrasing the president as saying: “When I say something the markets react, all of society reacts, other countries react. I’ve got to be careful with what I say. I can’t just say it for brinkmanship. I’ve got to say it in a way so that I get what I want said, but I don’t upset markets and so on.”

“He said it like this,” the Democrat elaborated: “‘When Eric Cantor says something, Eric Cantor says something. When I say something, markets and countries and people react in a way where it could cause us more problems than we have now.’”

Patriot Act Extension Signed By Obama.

WASHINGTON — Congress on Thursday passed a four-year extension of post-Sept. 11 powers to search records and conduct roving wiretaps in pursuit of terrorists. Votes taken in rapid succession in the Senate and House came after lawmakers rejected attempts to temper the law enforcement powers to ensure that individual liberties are not abused.

Following the 250-153 evening vote in the House, the legislation to renew three terrorism-fighting authorities headed for the president’s signature with only hours to go before the provisions expire at midnight.

With Obama currently in France, the White House said the president would use an autopen machine that holds a pen and signs his actual signature. It is only used with proper authorization of the president. Minutes before the midnight deadline, the White House said Obama had signed the bill.

Obama said he was pleased the act had been extended.

“It’s an important tool for us to continue dealing with an ongoing terrorist threat,” he said after a meeting with French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

A short-term expiration would not interrupt ongoing operations but would bar the government from seeking warrants for new investigations.

Congress bumped up against the deadline mainly because of the stubborn resistance from a single senator, Republican freshman Rand Paul of Kentucky, who saw the terrorist-hunting powers as an abuse of privacy rights. Paul held up the final vote for several days while he demanded a chance to change the bill to diminish the government’s ability to monitor individual actions. The bill passed the Senate 72-23.

The measure would add four years to the legal life of roving wiretaps – those authorized for a person rather than a communications line or device – of court-ordered searches of business records and of surveillance of non-American “lone wolf” suspects without confirmed ties to terrorist groups.

The roving wiretaps and access to business records are small parts of the USA Patriot Act enacted after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. But unlike most of the act, which is permanent law, those provisions must be renewed periodically because of concerns that they could be used to violate privacy rights. The same applies to the “lone wolf” provision, which was part of a 2004 intelligence law.

Paul argued that in the rush to meet the terrorist threat in 2001 Congress enacted a Patriot Act that tramples on individual liberties. He had some backing from liberal Democrats and civil liberties groups who have long contended the law gives the government authority to spy on innocent citizens.

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said he voted for the act when he was a House member in 2001 “while ground zero was still burning.” But “I soon realized it gave too much power to government without enough judicial and congressional oversight.”

Sen. Mark Udall, D-Colo., said the provision on collecting business records can expose law-abiding citizens to government scrutiny. “If we cannot limit investigations to terrorism or other nefarious activities, where do they end?” he asked.

“The Patriot Act has been used improperly again and again by law enforcement to invade Americans’ privacy and violate their constitutional rights,” said Laura W. Murphy, director of the ACLU Washington legislative office.

Still, coming just a month after intelligence and military forces tracked down and killed Osama bin Laden, there was little appetite for tampering with the terrorism-fighting tools. These tools, said Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, “have kept us safe for nearly a decade and Americans today should be relieved and reassured to know that these programs will continue.”

Intelligence officials have denied improper use of surveillance tools, and this week both FBI Director Robert Mueller and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper sent letters to congressional leaders warning of serious national security consequences if the provisions were allowed to lapse.

The Obama administration says that without the three authorities the FBI might not be able to obtain information on terrorist plotting inside the U.S. and that a terrorist who communicates using different cell phones and email accounts could escape timely surveillance.

“When the clock strikes midnight tomorrow, we would be giving terrorists the opportunity to plot attacks against our country, undetected,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said on the Senate floor Wednesday. In unusually personal criticism of a fellow senator, he warned that Paul, by blocking swift passage of the bill, “is threatening to take away the best tools we have for stopping them.”

The nation itself is divided over the Patriot Act, as reflected in a Pew Research Center poll last February, before the killing of bin Laden, that found that 34 percent felt the law “goes too far and poses a threat to civil liberties. Some 42 percent considered it “a necessary tool that helps the government find terrorists.” That was a slight turnaround from 2004 when 39 percent thought it went too far and 33 percent said it was necessary.

Paul, after complaining that Reid’s remarks were “personally insulting,” asked whether the nation “should have some rules that say before they come into your house, before they go into your banking records, that a judge should be asked for permission, that there should be judicial review? Do we want a lawless land?”

Paul agreed to let the bill go forward after he was given a vote on two amendments to rein in government surveillance powers. Both were soundly defeated. The more controversial, an amendment that would have restricted powers to obtain gun records in terrorist investigations, was defeated 85-10 after lawmakers received a letter from the National Rifle Association stating that it was not taking a position on the measure.

According to a senior Justice Department national security official testifying to Congress last March, the government has sought roving wiretap authority in about 20 cases a year between 2001 and 2010 and has sought warrants for business records less than 40 times a year, on average. The government has yet to use the lone wolf authority.

But the ACLU also points out that court approvals for business record access jumped from 21 in 2009 to 96 last year, and the organization contends the Patriot Act has blurred the line between investigations of actual terrorists and those not suspected of doing anything wrong.

Two Democratic critics of the Patriot Act, Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon and Udall of Colorado, on Thursday extracted a promise from Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., that she would hold hearings with intelligence and law enforcement officials on how the law is being carried out.

Wyden says that while there are numerous interpretations of how the Patriot Act works, the official government interpretation of the law remains classified. “A significant gap has developed now between what the public thinks the law says and what the government secretly claims it says,” Wyden said.