Posted on 05/23/2015 1:59:00 AM PDT by Jim Robinson
WASHINGTONThe Senate early Saturday defeated a string of efforts to extend the Patriot Act as lawmakers splintered over its contentious phone surveillance program and left town with no plan in place to prevent the law from lapsing.
After next weeks Memorial Day recess, the Senate will resume its debate over the national security law at 4 p.m. on May 31, eight hours before the law expires at midnight.
Lawmakers fractured through the evening, rejecting a House bill overhauling the NSA, a two-month Patriot Act extension and then increasingly short extensions of the law. Primarily due to objections from presidential candidate Sen. Rand Paul (R., Ky.) the Senate couldn't agree to pass even a 24-hour extension of the Patriot Act, the 2001 law that expanded the governments authority to search for terror suspects.
We better be ready next Sunday afternoon, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) said on the Senate floor after the early-morning series of blocked votes. Next Sundays session will be an opportunity to act responsibly and not allow this program to expire, he said.
Beginning shortly after midnight, the Senate narrowly blocked a House bill ending the NSAs collection of bulk phone information, requiring the government instead to obtain court approval to request phone records from companies on a case-by-case basis. The vote to move forward with the House bill was 57-42, short of the 60 votes needed to clear the Senates procedural threshold.
The bill had easily cleared the House with bipartisan support last week and was backed by the White House.
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
Overall, I am comfortable with this. In a world with an Administration and subordinate agencies truly operating solely for the protection of this country I’d agree with the concept of surveillance that sometimes skirts the protections afforded by the Constitution.
However, given the record of this President and the statements before press and Congress by some of his agency head with regard to the level of surveillance, I am not in favor of that carte blanche FISA rubber stamp under the guise of national security from terrorism when the President himself won’t even acknowledge Islam as a systemic terrorism problem. In the words of Johnny Cochran, “...the glove just don’t fit!”
Frankly though, even if the act isn’t renewed, I suspect it won’t make a difference in actual practice. Obama and his agencies have already shown their allegiance is not to established law and the Constitution. They, especially the NSA, are designed for secrecy; they’ll just keep doing it, law or no law.
Wonder if the Senate has spoken to the experts and the experts have informed the Senate the ‘backdoors’ are too numerous to need extensions?
Of course Mitch McConnell loves the NSA law, he can use it against conservatives.
What a sleazy worthless creep who deserves to suffocate on his boyfriend.
(prayers) America has one in ten left there seeing the info that are honest. Best guess is there might still be one in every twenty to thirty .... honest and trying to do right and proper.
The only way to stop evil from utilizing our law(s) against us is to erase the law
We operated just fine for over two hundred years without the Patriot Act ... repealing it and/or letting it die will not kill us, nor leave some unrepairable rent in our fabric .... we are AMERICANS !
Great, so the fear mongering of cultural Marxists like Rand Paul won the day, and we’re on our way back to a pre-9/11 world.
In effect, that is what I said. I am comfortable that the Senate did not renew it. I certainly hope the House of Representatives does the same.
He won’t follow the laws as they are. Let’s not give him the luxury of being able to hide behind this one when he does violate our freedoms for his own purposes.
Yep ... just synopsizin’ for my own feeble mentality
The Patriot Act was completely unnecessary pre or post 9/11. Hanging a couple politicians would have sufficed.
Your comments are similar to my thoughts as all this Patriot Act crap was becoming law. Yes, for the good intentions of protecting our country, it could be considered a good thing. But in the hands of a leftist regime, it becomes our very own Gestapo.
The name “Home Lands Security” does not set well. “Home Land” sort of mimics Nazi Germany’s “Father Land”.
One thing we can trust in, the Patriot act will be extended, possibly be made worse. The NSA will still be allowed to spy on anyone they want.
Their are no opposition political parties keeping our government balanced in the best interests of the people. Our Uniparty’s battle cry is “Leftward Ho!”
I could be if we could trust them. The positive is that I'm assuming voter anger has reached the boiling point, and maybe, just maybe, the DC crowd will start realizing we exist.
With what we have learned from Edward Snowden and what we have observed of our lying government ‘leaders’ (choke), does anyone seriously believe that this intrusive mass-surveillance is going to stop, regardless of what we will be told?
Since the FBI’s own report says that the Patriot Act has not lead to a single terrorist apprehension, it needs to go away and American Freedoms to be restored.
I’ve always felt that it didn’t carve out a safe place for Americans.
Hey, it’s a start! But what’s bothering me this morning is this TPP thing. Legislation being passed in secret? Details of which are forbidden to the citizenry? This is news of the century! And FoxNews won’t carry a word of it. I’m frightened. :(
He and the the two in the GOP Unholy Trinity - Boner and Preibus.
I hope it dies in Congress. A bad law is worse than no law and any law giving that Satanic bastard in the White House more power is a bad law.
Rand Paul is many things, many I do not like. Marxist is not one of them. Libertarian means individual freedom without government intervention (I am not a libertarian....we need government for some things....no much but some)
NSA is a patch to try to fix the fact that we willing let Muslims into America. And a bad patch at that and all it accomplishes is spying on citizens.
The Senate trying to make up for the treasonous vote on the trade bill?
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