Lol no I blame the others as well, and because we are idiots who elect the same people over and over again a lot of them are still in office 20+ years later 🙄
But yes the president usually shapes policy and leads his party, and if his party has the house and senate the president is largely responsible for policy.
I believe Ron Paul was one of the few who voted against it I wish we had more people like him now.
Party politics is killing what the Dems like to call "our democracy!" As far as I can tell, the democratic process of electing our representatives is a closed system. we vote for the people who run, and regular, honest people who are willing to run are rare.
I listen to the people in Congress regurgitating the prepared remarks their staffers wrote, and it makes me want to regurgitate, too. They quite often have no clue about the facts, yet are okay with spouting reasons, causes and solutions based on emotional appeal. The lead Dems who get the most on-camera time are the biggest offenders. I see fewer in the GOP who do that, but it could be because the Liberal media doesn't give then the same amount of coverage.
Anyway, the Patriot Act did some good things, like putting terrorists in Cuba away from the US legal process which would have been inadequate to facilitate the methods needed to execute a war. There was abuse, but that's going on in US prisons, too, to an extent. Imagine the regular inmates being around terrorists and being radicalized.
The 9-11 and anthrax attacks are what really spurred the need for the Patriot Act. There were sunset provisions that would have ended the Act in 2005, but it has been extended several times since then. That includes an extension signed by Obama in 2011. Obviously, for all of its failures, the Patriot Act must be at least in part worth keeping if it remains law after so many opportunities to let it die. Those opportunities also happened under a Democrat-controlled Congress and White House.