"Lisa Graves" is an United States/American Progressivism in the United States/progressive who currently serves as Executive Director of the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD).

More Lisa Graves on Wikipedia.

[Lisa Graves of the American Civil Liberties Union scoffed at a defense official's assertion that the proposed change would not allow for carte blanche Pentagon spying inside the United States.] That's some spin, ... The change would allow them to gather information on Americans surreptitiously. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's a duck.

It provides more protections and important clarifications than the other bills that are being considered, ... But all the bills fall short of what is necessary to bring the Patriot Act back in line with the Constitution.

When lawmakers seek to rewrite our Fourth Amendment rights, they should at least have the gumption to do so in public. Americans have a reasonable expectation that their federal government will not gather records about their health, their wealth and the transactions of their daily life without probable cause of a crime and without a court order.

The Patriot Act debate is whether FISA adequately protects civil liberties. The point of FISA was to interpose a judge between the president and the citizen to make sure they wouldn't gather data on someone unilaterally.

The Patriot Act was bad in 2001, and despite bipartisan calls for reform, it's still bad in 2005.

Instead of addressing the real concerns ... the Republican majority in Congress buckled to White House pressure.

It gives a nod toward checks and balances without fixing the most fundamental flaws in the Patriot Act.

We're seeing an administration that's engaging in a lot of legal hairsplitting to justify behavior that's not authorized by the law.