[ComputerGuy]

Politicians have principles?

[Sacajaweau]

Wake up Rand Paul....We only have the house...Unless you think the government should stop..."dead nuts".

Go after Schumer and Biden..and McConnell....to pass HR2.

[HIDEK6]

Just like John Roberts.

[hardspunned]

Oh, but he will be the toast of FR today. He will funnel $50B and $14B to the Uke and Israeli wars this week. All hail the conquering neocon budgetary hero!

[Gary from Dayton]

Mike Johnson was blackmailed immediately after becoming speaker.

[whitney69]

They just don’t get it. Until the border is under control, and congress rethinks what they are doing in the Ukraine and possibly Israel, Johnson is not going to let either party get away with screwing up the American people. He’s more like Trump than people give him credit for. Interesting how he didn’t kill the bill, he just wouldn’t let it pass. Sooner or later congress is going to have to entertain the issues Johnson wanted that were the same ones Trump did, or they will have a log jam locking up their work, either side. So much for the swamp.

wy69

[StrictConstructionist]

Gee. A politician lied. Imagine that.

[Chauncey Gardiner]

One can only suspect he’s been threatened with blackmail - perhaps another Epstein friend?

[Bratch]

Inside Baseball Stuff on FISA 702 Reauthorization – The Stuff You Never See Explained

April 10, 2024 | Sundance | 224 Comments

Before getting into bigger picture analysis and intellectual discussion about FISA and the 702 reauthorizations, let me just reveal some inside DC crap that drives me nuts and at the same time will help y’all understand the nonsense.

First, the Intelligence Community (IC) tells congress, particularly the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, that all hell will break loose if they don’t reauthorize full electronic surveillance of Americans.  Congress is petrified of the IC.

Speaker Johnson and all of the key participants are totally siloed from understanding that 702 has nothing to do with incidental collection of American data whilst the honorable IC were doing foreign intercepts.   Johnson and most Republicans believe the IC nonsense. They really do.

The politicians and their key staff cannot fathom how the FBI, DOJ, NSD, DHS and contractors use this database to conduct political and “other” (think corporate espionage for sale) surveillance.  They really do think the IC is full of honorable rank-and-file.  They are inside a DC bubble.

Second, the IC argument is now something akin to we have let thousands of terrorists into the country through the southern border crisis. 

They say:  “My god, we need to monitor the terrorists, and if you take away 702 the foreign terror cells will activate and start killing us all.  Do you want that blood on your hands?”   You cannot take away surveillance tools.

Third, FISA 702 reauthorization is used as a bargaining chip by people who don’t want to get caught up in the surveillance.

The DC conversations are something like,

“Ok, we’ll reauthorize it, but you cannot use it against us – and all the sex parties and perverted stuff we do when no one is around, you must promise to keep our secrets hidden“… 

Yes, this is why the IC agree to accept a reauthorization that exempts Congress.   The IC keep the blackmail – just promise not to use it.

We The People do not have any friends in DC on this issue.  The Democrats will reauthorize 702 to continue exploiting surveillance authority – don’t forget over 10,000 log-in portals with access to the NSA database exist, including the workstation at Perkins Coie that ties into the NSA database {GO DEEP}.

President Trump finally opposes the FISA system – writ large – and THAT is progress.

More soon….

House Speaker Mike Johnson 

[sphinx]

Mike Johnson didn’t change his positions. He was elected Speaker, which makes him responsible for managing a coalition in which the brutal reality is that there is no majority for anything. Left to itself, the current House Republican caucus couldn’t agree to turn on the lights.

Rand Paul has a near-terminal case of Libertarian Disease. He is much happier as a Party of One basking before the mirror in narcissistic admiration of his ideological purity than in compromising enough to actually pass anything. In fact, if someone tried to pose in the same mirror with Rand Paul, they would immediately start a libertarian factional fight over who got to strike the better pose. They would end up smashing the mirror and locking themselves alone in their rooms to bask separately in their own purity. This is why Libertarians in politics have never accomplished anything besides fratricide, executed with complete moral smugness and equally complete indifference to the results.

By far the largest vote block in the House is the Democratic caucus, which is a collection of party hacks who vote as a monolith. They do have internal disagreements, but they are dominated by their radical socialist, identity politics, racialist and abortionist faction — and none of the other democrats will put principle over party and break ranks on the floor. That puts Hakeem Jeffries a couple of votes away from becoming Speaker.

The Republican caucus is basically center right with antagonistic RINO and Freedom Caucus factions who now go out of their way to sabotage each other. The RINOs would sooner vote with the dems than yield to the Freedom Caucus. The Freedom Caucus is spoiling for a fight and emotionally thinks in terms of a scorched earth government shutdown as the best way to advance their agenda. They only reason they haven’t done this is that most of them are still sober enough to recognize that this would simply push the RINOS into voting with the dems to pass a budget — and that a Jeffries-Schumer-Biden budget will come bundled with absolute open immigration, a fast track to citizenship, abortion extremism, etc. Most of the Freedom Caucus members are sane enough to understand that enacting the democrat agenda out of spite is not the path forward.

Mike Johnson’s task is keeping the lunatics at each extreme of the caucus in the boat.

If Jeffries becomes Speaker, how long do you think the Senate democrats will keep the filibuster?

And that becomes a question of whether you have faith in Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema to hold the line on the filibuster ... and whether you are confident that a couple of the RINO Senators won’t break ranks.

This sort of thing is old hat to the Israelis, and it’s the kind of thing we used to make fun of the Italians about. It’s an ugly problem. The solution to it is to elect a majority in the House or Senate, and preferably both, to put an end to the factional doomsday scenarios.

And if we do manage somehow to elect a Republican House, Senate and president — whereupon the democrats will immediately go into full filibuster mode — the question will become whether Republicans should keep the filibuster.

[1Old Pro]

Yep, MTG should oust him.

[VTenigma]

Because he’s owned.

[dgbrown]

It is common for folks to change when being blackmailed or threatened.