Posted on 05/23/2015 1:59:00 AM PDT by Jim Robinson
WASHINGTON—The 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 week’s 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 government’s 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 Sunday’s 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 NSA’s 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 Senate’s 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 ...
Governments do not need legal sanction to engage in surveillance and espionage. They’re going to to it anyways. I prefer that they not have the cloak of legal sanction to do so.
This was a bad law under Bush and a worse law under dear leader. Its best that it go away. Unfortunately it will probably survive. The uniparty isn’t happy operating in the shadows: they prefer to screw us in the day
Ight and in public.
Agreed as to the Patriot Act and Homelad Defense. that’s what I thought when they first came out. I’m sick of the use of names that are designed to elicit an emotional patriotic response. Don’t manipulate me, just provide for the. Common defense.
Wow in Maine collins and king parted ways, collins voted her usual, what ever the fabian society wants the fabian society gets, while King, for once, voted for freedom.
Maine: Collins (R-ME), Yea
King (I-ME), Nay
“TO SECURE THESE RIGHTS”
Anything else is beyond the scope of the limited specified purpose for American government.
But who gets to decide when to skirt the Constitution? You? ME? the congress? the administration? the courts? Who?
Perhaps we might leave it up to the director of NSA?
No, let's just abide by it or alter it with a Constitutional amendment, not a con con, but an independent amendment.
There is one large problem...... the phone companies. Although the NSA can illegally request the phone company data, there is no guarantee nor evidence that the phone companies will continue to provide the data sans warrant in violation of the law
As I interpret the current results, NCIS will need a judge on staff to permit McGee to come up with phone records in a timely manner to prevent being smacked on the back of the head by Gibbs
That is exactly right. Islam must be redefined as a totalitarian world view and NOT A RELIGION. Political correctness got us 9/11.
“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 government’s authority to search for terror suspects.”
I’m not typically a Paul fan, but today I am!
He is a cultural Marxist, not an economic one, though he is as ideological as any Marxist.
“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.”
Yes, I remember that “pre-9/11 world” - the one with The Constitution. I liked that world that included Rights better.
Our problem is not just this president. Our national problem is the now evident truth that this elite group in Washington DC is all in the same bed. They intentionally support one another. I trust the GOP no more than the Democrats.
If they are not going to fight and defeat the terrorist overseas then surrendering our rights to fight a defensive war at home is a never ending and inevitably losing cause.
Besides a terrorist with a brain is not going to uses an unencripted phone call which a wiretap will detect. A terrorist without a brain is likely to be killed or caught by some other foolish mestake.
How. How is he a cultural Marxist? Pro gun, pro life. Pro freedom to worship. HOW IS HE A CULTURAL MARXIST?
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." Franklin
Why National-Security Republicans Lost the Patriot Act Debate
Andrew C. McCarthy
May 23, 2015
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/418807/why-national-security-republicans-lost-patriot-act-debate-andrew-c-mccarthy
The NSA doesn’t even know your name.
But you probably don’t know that. It is amazing how little the public has learned from the debate the national-security Right has lost — not is losing but has lost — over the National Security Agency’s “metadata” program.
The information the NSA has collected in bulk from telecommunication-service providers does not include the names of telephone subscribers. They don’t know who you are. It does not include addresses. They don’t know where you are.
(Snip)
If we have to take it or leave it then I say leave it. If we cannot have a Department of Justice that is willing to ensure that the FISA Court that reviews these LE and Agency requests will review them with due diligence according to the law and not rubber stamp 95% of the thousand and thousands of blanket requests each year, then DUMP the law.
Further, if we cannot trust a President and Administration to do their due diligence in exercising management oversight over agencies under their direct control - then dump it. Dump it. Dump it. Dump it.
They’ll just have to gumshoe it like they used to have to do instead of hoovering up every electronic bit known to man that they cannot even sift through until after something has happened and then go back and lie and say “we were onto them suckers, but blah, blah blah....”
I don’t disagree with that.
Governments, particularly this one, are famed for their ability to threaten and coerce via threat of prosecution (mostly bluffed) to get what they want. They have been known to fabricate justifications for warrants, fabricate evidence, even commit criminal acts to subvert justice.
Plenty of examples: FISA rubber stamps, ATF operations (a couple famous ones), Administration goon threats to GM premium bond holders, and so on. There's quite a list one could put together if one want to spend a day or so researching it.
Well, you have plenty of company my FRiend....:0)
It’s not the intrusion; we need the capability to get any information, anywhere, by any means necessary. It is doing so without a warrant and without the information that led to the warrant being available for review and eventually released in the event of abuse.
No warrant, no spying on American citizens, period.
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