i thank the gentleman for yielding .  listeners should realize that truth is not required in debate on the floor of the house .  the chairman of the rules committee stood up here and said there has not been one complaint about the use of the patriot act , or the abuse .  he should talk to brandon mayfield from portland , oregon , who was considered to be a perpetrator of the madrid bombing and they used the patriot act to accumulate the nonevidence about him .  the government has subsequently apologized , and he sued the government , but i guess that is not a complaint .  maybe we are not hearing the complaints because librarians , bookstore owners , and business owners can themselves be prosecuted if they tell anybody that there was an unwarranted gathering of records about innocent americans from them .  so , yeah , i guess there is sort of a dearth of complaints .  then there is the other gentleman .  he said , well , we can change this later .  we heard that when we passed the first patriot act , which no member of the house of representatives had read , at 10 o'clock in the morning with one copy available on each side of the aisle .  we said it sunsets ; you can change it later .  now is later .  it is time to change it .  guess what ?  they say well , no , we ca n't change it now ; we might change it later after we make it permanent now .  before it was temporary ; we are going to change it later .  now , it is permanent , maybe we will change it later .  come on .  let 's be honest about this debate .  you are jamming this through on behalf of the white house and the attorney general .  they want this .  it is bad legislation .  it threatens the civil liberties of americans , and i believe it will impinge on our investigation and finding of terrorists .  these national security letters , 30 , 000 national security letters , gathering huge amounts of data about the lives of innocent americans .  in the past , that would have to be discarded .  now they say , well , we 're going to keep it ; but do n't worry , all the information we 're going to accumulate about people , innocent americans , is going to go into a databank ; but it will only be available to the federal government , state government , local governments , tribal governments and appropriate private entities .  i guess there is one person in america who might not be able to tap into this databank .  this is going to create such a huge haystack of irrelevant information about the lives of innocent americans that the fbi , who had one terrorist in hand , musawi , and had an agent in arizona pointing at the plot , could not even see their hand in front of their face .  now we are going to create a huge mountain of irrelevant data about innocent people and this is somehow going to improve how they perform in finding terrorists in america ?  i do n't think so .  then the most cynical thing about this bill is to take a meritorious bill that deals with methamphetamine precursors and trafficking , that passed separately in this house of representatives , which i supported , and they are going to include it as part of this legislation in a cynical ploy to somehow basically force , bully , or trick people into supporting the underlying legislation with its unwarranted attack on the bill of rights , the constitution of america , the foundation of our government , the gathering secretly of information about innocent americans , and the permanent retention of that information for no good purpose .  this is bad legislation .  the time has come to change it .  it should be defeated , and we should change it now .  