Rand Blocks the Renewal of Patriot Act

[surf]

I heard Amash say that this bill, that started out pretty killer and had Justin Amash as one of the original cosponsors, was so butchered when it got out of the house that he was hopeful it would fail. he voted against this. Rand can just follow Amash' lead on items born in the people's house.

originally it was worthy of the title "freedom act." when it got to the senate it was an oxymoron.

Rand did the right thing.

 

[anaconda]

Does it bother anyone that Tom Cotton, Marco Rubio, Lindsey Graham, and John McCain also "blocked" this bill?

I'm assuming that most of the "nays" were because the bill did not go far enough in advancing the police state.

 

[r3volution 3.0]

Because they disagree that there's any problem to begin with. They don't want even window dressing reforms because that would be conceding that the public outrage at the NSA is justified, which they would never admit.

Bingo

These people can never acknowledge even the slightest flaw (no matter how trivial) in the national security state, because public confidence in the whole thing rests on the perceived omniscience and omnipotence of the state. Strong-men have to hide their imperfections from the public: nobody can know FDR is a cripple, Kim Jong Il never gets the hiccups, Putin wrestles bears, etc.

 

[presence]

So the bill was originally built to do two things:


Reign in the NSA, including their collection of Metadata
AND
Renew the Patriot Act

As it was voted on... the first notion was grossly watered down and the bill was essentially just a renewal of the Patriot Act.


However you got 4 opposing Bootlegger and Baptist coalitions voting:

YEA = Renew the Patriot Act at the expense of moderate Reforms
or
YEA = Support moderate NSA Reforms, unfortunately renew PA to do so.

NAY = Do not renew the Patriot Act, reforms inadequate.
or
NAY = Not willing to make any NSA Reforms




The words convoluted, byzantine, and circuitous come to mind.


Essentially nothing happened. Stalemate.

 

[milgram]

Marcy Wheeler digs pretty deep into these surveillance bills, so here's her bullet points for why she opposes it. Click the link for more details.

https://www.emptywheel.net/2014/11/12/why-i-dont-support-usa-freedom-act/

As you may remember, I don’t support USAF. Here’s a summary of why.

1 - No one will say how the key phone record provision of the bill will work

2 - USAF negotiates from a weak position and likely moots potentially significant court gains

3 - USAF’s effects in limiting bulk collection are overstated

4 - USAF would eliminate any pushback from providers

5 - USAF may have the effect of weakening existing minimization procedures

6 - USAF’s transparency provisions are bullshit

7 - Other laudable provisions — like the Advocate — will easily be undercut

On the downside, Feinstein/Chambliss have competing legislation which McConnell actually favors.

 

[thoughtomator]

Collins, don't try to spin us. You owe us more respect than that. Save it for the idiot crowd in the media.

 

[Feelgood]

Wow. Cruz voted yes?

Both of my Senators voted no??

WTF is this Twilight Zone episode Im watching!??!

 

[idiom]

If Rand can turn voting for the Patriot bill into an election losing event, then he doesn't need to win a vote to kill it as it will sunset itself. If the senate gets messy enough we could run out the clock on it.

 

[Todd]

So the bill was originally built to do two things:


Reign in the NSA, including their collection of Metadata
AND
Renew the Patriot Act

As it was voted on... the first notion was grossly watered down and the bill was essentially just a renewal of the Patriot Act.


However you got 4 opposing Bootlegger and Baptist coalitions voting:

YEA = Renew the Patriot Act at the expense of moderate Reforms
or
YEA = Support moderate NSA Reforms, unfortunately renew PA to do so.

NAY = Do not renew the Patriot Act, reforms inadequate.
or
NAY = Not willing to make any NSA Reforms




The words convoluted, byzantine, and circuitous come to mind.


Essentially nothing happened. Stalemate.

Yep. That is what it is.
But I guess that stalemate is the first step in slamming the breaks on the runaway train. Now if we could just get the sucker into reverse.

Collins, don't try to spin us. You owe us more respect than that. Save it for the idiot crowd in the media.

This^

 

[economics102]

This is an unfortunate position Rand has been put in but I suspect he'll turn it to his favor and use it to draw more attention to the Patriot Act.

 

[Stallheim]

This is a great grass roots opportunity for some subterfuge: rather than accuse No voters of doing it for the wrong reasons we should get the message out through various channels that they should be celebrated for their courage in opposing Patriot Act renewal. When they see that they are on the side of a wave of American popularity they might flip when the bill to renew comes up again.

 

[Stallheim]

As a bonus, if they don't, we can have it proclaimed that they are inconsistent pawns of the corporate elite, let them defend against that! This drags them out from under the rotten log.

 

[Brett85]

I heard Amash say that this bill, that started out pretty killer and had Justin Amash as one of the original cosponsors, was so butchered when it got out of the house that he was hopeful it would fail. he voted against this. Rand can just follow Amash' lead on items born in the people's house.

originally it was worthy of the title "freedom act." when it got to the senate it was an oxymoron.

Rand did the right thing.

Leahy's bill isn't the same as the bill that passed the house. It's stronger than that bill, which is why Rubio, McCain, Graham, etc. all voted against it.

 

[No1butPaul]

Mike Lee??? That's surprising to me, as is Cruz, since they both stood with Rand in the past.

 

[Brett85]

Mike Lee??? That's surprising to me, as is Cruz, since they both stood with Rand in the past.

Again, Lee and Cruz's votes were far more pro liberty than those who voted against this bill for the reason that it went too far in reigning in the NSA. Marco Rubio got up on the Senate floor and talked about how we were all going to get killed by ISIS if this bill passed.

 

[presence]

Collins, don't try to spin us. You owe us more respect than that. Save it for the idiot crowd in the media.

Not every thread posted at RPF is addressed to the choir. To some degree this site is a liberty news portal to the general public.

Rand Blocks the Renewal of Patriot Act

...makes good sound bytes.

 

[jmdrake]

I predict ultimately the Patriot Act will be extended and the NSA will not be reformed. I'm in unsure if this was a good move. Time will tell.

 

[Lucille]

The comsotarians whine that he was letting the perfect be the enemy of the "merely better," as if any of it would stop anyway.

http://reason.com/blog/2014/11/19/senate-votes-to-maintain-the-national-se

Paul said immediately after the vote that he “felt bad” about his vote against the motion.

“They probably needed my vote,” he said, opposing Leahy’s bill because it would extend the sunset provisions for the laws authorizing surveillance. “It’s hard for me to vote for something I object to so much.”

Although his single vote would not have been enough to open up debate, Paul should nevertheless have heeded the insight of the developer of radar Robert Alexander Watson-Watt who explained, "Give them the third best to go on with; the second best comes too late, the best never comes." I am no parliamentarian, but it appears that under Senate rules because Paul voted with the prevailing side, he could move to have the Senate reconsider the bill, although it seems unlikely that he will do so.

Paul and the rest of his fellow citizens may well come to rue the day that he allowed the perfect to get in the way of the merely better.

http://powerofnarrative.blogspot.com/2013/09/when-state-floods-zone-reform-is-dead.html

As a result of the recent NSA/surveillance stories, there is much debate about the NSA and its massive spying apparatus. But as the existence of InfraGard shows, the NSA is only the beginning of what should concern us. In fact, and it gives me no pleasure to say this, but it's better to face the truth as fully as we can, if the NSA ceased to exist today, it would not make any appreciable difference in the surveillance activities of the United States government.
[...]
As I already noted, you could eliminate the NSA entirely this very minute, and it wouldn't make a damned bit of difference. But the heightened focus on the NSA, while ignoring all the other agencies and programs involved in similar and even identical activities, leads directly to the "solution" that will make the State writhe in ecstasy. Congress will have some hearings, and they will provide for some "oversight" and "accountability," and most people, including most of the State's critics, will herald the great triumph of "the people" and "democracy." Meanwhile, the State will continue doing exactly what it was doing before.

http://ohtarzie.wordpress.com/2013/09/16/dr-rosen-and-the-snowden-effect/

 

[Occam's Banana]

The words convoluted, byzantine, and circuitous come to mind.

When you have some "authoritarians" united with some "libertarians" in opposing something (the former because it "goes too far" and the latter because it "doesn't go far enough") - and at the same time you have other "authoritarians" united with other "libertarians" in supporting the very same thing (the former because it "goes adequately far" and the latter because it "doesn't go too far") ... well, then you know that you have reached the utter and droolingly vacuous wit's end of politics ...

And that's not even considering the fact that you could simply "reverse the polarity" of the "goes far" rhetoric and it would STILL amount to exactly the same thing (for example, "authoritarians" in opposition to this bill could say that it "doesn't go far enough" and "libertarians" in opposition could say that it "goes too far") ...

SMGDH ... but what else can you expect from such a grotesque mish-mash of "X steps forward, Y steps backward" stuffed into the same bag? ... it's like a Trojan Horse for everybody ...

 

[Brian4Liberty]

The official press release from Rand's office:

Sen. Paul Blocks the Renewal of Patriot Act
‘One step closer to restoring liberty’
Nov 18, 2014

Earlier this evening, Sen. Rand Paul voted against further consideration of the USA Freedom Act as it currently extends key provisions of the Patriot Act until 2017. Sen. Paul led the charge against the Patriot Act extension and offered the following statement:

“In the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Americans were eager to catch and punish the terrorists who attacked us. I, like most Americans, demanded justice. But one common misconception is that the Patriot Act applies only to foreigners—when in reality, the Patriot Act was instituted precisely to widen the surveillance laws to include U.S. citizens,” Sen. Paul said, “As Benjamin Franklin put it, ‘those who trade their liberty for security may wind up with neither.’ Today’s vote to oppose further consideration of the Patriot Act extension proves that we are one step closer to restoring civil liberties in America.”
...
http://www.paul.senate.gov/?p=press_release&id=1244