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‘Handful of Senators’ Blocking Patriot Act Extension

President Barack Obama speaks to media as he meets with Attorney General Loretta Lynch in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, Friday, May 29, 2015. The president said a "handful of senators" are the only thing standing in the way of an extension of key Patriot Act provisions before they expire at midnight Sunday. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

US President Barack Obama has blamed a “handful of senators” for blocking the USA Freedom Act, designed to extend the mass surveillance legislated by section 215 of the infamous Patriot Act, which expires on 1st June. Obama has told Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell that he expects senators who are standing in the way of the extension to fall in line before May comes to an end.

Last week, the Senate voted against The USA Freedom Act (57/42 votes) and a 60-day emergency extension to the existing Patriot Act (54/45 votes).

“I don’t want us to be in a situation in which for a certain period of time those authorities go away and suddenly we are dark,” Obama said. “And heaven forbid we’ve got a problem where we could have prevented a terrorist attack or apprehended someone who is engaged in dangerous activity but we didn’t do so simply because of inaction in the Senate.”

McConnell is expected to call the Senate into session on Sunday in an effort to push through the extension before it expires at midnight “to make every effort to provide the intelligence community with the tools it needs to combat terror,” according to his spokesman, Don Stewart.

“The only thing that is standing in the way is a handful of senators who are resisting these reforms despite law enforcement and the (intelligence community) saying ‘let’s go ahead and get this done,'” Obama added, putting the blame of any failure to extend the act squarely on the Senate.

If only they’d called it the Stars and Stripes and Apple Pie Act, it would have been a dead rubber.

Thank you Yahoo! Tech for providing us with this information.