Senator Chuck Schumer ought to be ashamed of himself. He represents one of the most progressive states in the nation, so why has Schumer gone and voted against reforms to the Patriot Act – twice in two weeks?

Last week, Schumer voted against protecting Americans from known abuses of the Patriot Act’s Section 215. Section 215 enables the government to go and grab massive amounts of information about Americans’ personal lives from commercial databases – web surfing habits, telephone records, credit card records, medical information and so on.

Then, today, Schumer voted against restricting the totalitarian practice of National Security Letters, which allow government agents to go out and conduct searches and seizures without any search warrant, and legally prohibit people from blowing the whistle.

Both reforms were limited: All they asked is that if Section 215 powers or National Security Letters were used by the FBI, that the people or papers being targeted should be related in some way to terrorists or foreign spies. Is that too much to ask? Charles Schumer thinks so. Apparently, Senator Schumer thinks that the government should be spying on Americans who don’t have anything to do with terrorism or foreign spying – and doing it without a search warrant too.

Those may be the values of Chuck Schumer, but those aren’t the values of progressive New Yorkers. Schumer’s embrace of the worst abuses of the Bush years promises to push more New York progressives away from the Democratic Party and its sinking standards.