With little fanfare, and after a long and protracted struggle on Capitol Hill, President Barack Obama quietly signed the USA Freedom Act into law shortly after it cleared the Senate by a vote of 67 to 32.

It was, to be sure, an anticlimax. The real fight, which began as an effort by congressional leaders to secure reauthorization on even a temporary basis for the post-9/11 Patriot Act, was all in the Senate – where Kentucky Republican Rand Paul held firm and helped win much-needed revisions to one of the original act's most controversial provisions.

Giving credit where credit is due, Paul deserves plaudits for his willingness to carry ball on the cause of reform. No matter how well-intentioned, nothing in the public policy arena gets anywhere unless at least one member of one congressional chamber is willing to stand up and make a fight.

The meta-data collection and massive telephone surveillance program that has now been ended was enormously unpopular with vast swaths of the American electorate. No one, it appears, like to be spied on. The ability to channel this unease into real and substantive action on policy matters is due, surprisingly, to a political movement whose obituary has been written time and again by the Republican establishment and the political media.



With more than 600,000 individual members participating in its national communications network, Tea Party Patriots – which claims 3,400 locally organized chapters and more than 15 million supporters around the country, making it one of the largest groups in the tea party movement – was relentless in its effort to drive support for Sen. Paul's effort to eliminate some of the Patriot Act's more offensive (to civil libertarians) elements. Working in coalition with the NAACP and the American Civil Liberties Union, Tea Party Patriots was able to drive home to members of the Senate that people were paying attention, perhaps closer attention than what the National Security Agency was giving their cell phone calls – and they didn't like what the Patriot Act allowed government agencies to do.

All of this apparently came as a surprise to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell who – along with Paul – comprises Kentucky's delegation to the U.S. Senate. Though poles apart in style, the two men usually vote together and take great pains to obscure any differences they may have on policy – or did anyway until it was time for the Patriot Act provisions to be renewed.

With Paul riding point, the Tea Party Patriots, the NAACP, the ACLU and others involved in the debate managed to shut down the Senate for a brief period. They certainly exerted enough pressure to force undecided senators to remain quiet on the reauthorization of the three key Patriot Act provisions the groups had in their sights. Paul's filibuster was sustained beyond the point when those provisions were timed, in the original legislation, to lapse.

