Editor, Excluding Rep. Jack Kingston, R-Ga. 1, I am deeply disappointed in the House Republicans. I am aware of how the Patriot Act was passed following Sept. 11, 2001. Most Americans — including myself — did not examine the bill closely because it was an emotional time. I was overseas at the time and allowed myself to be somewhat out of touch. 
I was sure the act would not be extended when Obama was elected. I never dreamed the Democrats would do that. And this year, with so many “genuine conservatives” coming to Congress and considering the recent espousal of conservative and strict constructionist values, I was positive that a Republican House of Representatives would not extend the Patriot Act.
Obviously, I was wrong. The aspect of the vote that amazed me was the contradiction between Republican rhetoric and lawmakers’ actions. I — and all Republicans — have railed for two years about the unconstitutionality of Obamacare. Indeed, we have done the same for decades regarding assaults on the Second Amendment. I could go on, but you get the point. You cannot cherry-pick the Constitution. Republicans have been saying this ad-nauseam. Yet they blatantly and overwhelmingly ignored their rhetoric and the First and Fourth Amendments to vote for the Patriot Act. What hypocrisy! 
In my opinion, people cannot call themselves conservatives, Republicans or Constitutional conservatives and vote for the Patriot Act. When I find the most notoriously liberal and “progressive” social engineers in this nation, i.e. Pelosi and Waxman, vote against the Patriot Act, I ask how can people like Speaker Boehner, Michelle Bachman and Eric Cantor support it?
I am a fortunate American and a conservative. I have a congressman from the First District of Georgia who will not turn his back on the Constitution for his party. He is not a hypocrite like so many of his Republican colleagues who would employ the tactics of tyrants and despots to fight their terrorism. Jack Kingston knows one cannot cherry-pick the Constitution and the Bill of Rights without cutting down the tree of liberty.

— Mike Steele
Midway