After a lot of huffing and puffing, about the need to add more civil liberties protections to a law already teeming with them, the Democrat-controlled Senate quietly voted to extend the three Patriot Act provisions that would have expired without reauthorization. Although beating back Patriot and its sensible national security provisions has been a rallying cry for the Left, Senate Democrats agreed to a clean reauthorization on a voice-vote. The New York Times managed just a paragraph, culled from the AP wire, to report the extension. Why so quiet? There are a couple of reasons, I suspect, and Michelle Malkin — ever on the case — gives us both of them.