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When it comes to defending the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, the nonpartisan ACLU is just as happy to work with the Center for Constitutional Rights and the National Lawyers Guild as with Bob Barr and the American Conservative Union. But the ACLU's "strange bedfellows" alliance with conservatives against renewal of controversial Patriot Act provisions has not, as David Cole suggests, submerged our broader reform agenda ["The Missing Patriot Debate," May 30]. In fact, our association with conservative groups has triggered a groundswell of debate across the political spectrum on permanent Patriot Act provisions and other government policies that roll back rights.

Cole quite rightly champions the importance of these issues, and we applaud his legal work on behalf of the Humanitarian Law Project, a group that has been prevented from providing human rights training and advice to groups designated as "terrorist" under the Patriot Act. That is why the ACLU filed a brief in support of his case on May 16, and testified in Congress on the matter one week earlier.

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