Posted on 06/17/2013 12:57:42 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Via the Examiner, a short but noteworthy clip insofar as it exposes a potential fault line between Cruz and Rand Paul. McCain lumps them together as “wacko birds” but I’m not so sure that’s true of Cruz on national-security issues. His alliance with Paul interests me because it strikes me as a personification of the uneasy libertarian/tea-party alliance. The groups overlap heavily on spending issues, and both are deeply suspicious of Obama’s expansion of government. The master stroke of Paul’s drone filibuster was that he found a sweet spot for both, making the philosophical case for due process while humiliating O for having turned into such a hypocrite about it. Even so, no matter how much Paul sometimes likes to pretend that the tea party is synonymous with libertarianism (for his own strategic reasons), various polls show that it just isn’t so. Tea partiers are more socially conservative than doctrinaire libertarians, they’re more likely to support entitlements, and they’re more traditionally Republican on defense/security issues. That’s not to say that they’re not becoming more libertarian — polls lately show Republicans are more skeptical about NSA surveillance than Democrats are, although that’s probably for partisan reasons — but they’re not all Ron Paul fans either. That’s why Rand is usually quick to claim the tea-party label. The more he gets TPers thinking of themselves as allied with him, then theoretically the more receptive they’ll be to his libertarian ideals.
McCain doesn’t seem to understand the difference between them but comparing Paul’s reaction to the NSA revelations to Cruz’s is instructive. Paul’s first instinct was to organize a class-action lawsuit and accuse the NSA of an “extraordinary invasion of [Americans'] privacy.” Cruz, by contrast, says the revelations are “cause for concern” but urges Fox viewers to reserve judgment until we know more about the programs. And from the looks of it here, his chief objection seems to be that this particular administration can’t be trusted with NSA’s surveillance tools in light of the IRS scandal, not necessarily that any administration can’t be trusted with it. He may very well end up joining Paul’s lawsuit, but I suspect that’ll be aimed at impressing libertarians whose votes he’ll need if he ends up running for president someday just as Rand often tempers his own libertarianism in order to impress more mainstream tea-party conservatives. Cruz’s ally, Sarah Palin (who returned to Fox this morning, although she doesn’t speak in this clip) seems to be taking a position similar to his lately. From her speech at the Faith and Freedom Conference on Saturday:
“The scandals infecting this city, they are a symptom of a bigger disease, and it doesn’t matter if it’s a Republican or a Democrat sitting atop a bloated boot on your neck, out of control government, everybody gets infected, no party is immune,” Palin said. “That’s why, I tell you, I’m listening to those independents, those libertarians, who are saying, it is both sides of the aisle, the leadership, the good ol’ boys in the party on both sides of the aisle, they perpetuate the problem.”…
Palin also took on the “pandering, rewarding the rule breakers, still-no-border security, special interest written amnesty bill,” especially ribbing Jeb Bush for his fertility comment yesterday. “I think it’s kind of touchy territory to want to debate this over one race’s fertility over another, and I say that as someone who’s kinda fertile herself.”
Obama didn’t evade Palin’s lashing, either. “Where is our commander in chief?” Palin asked. “We’re talking now more new interventions? I say, until we know what we’re doing, until we have a commander in chief who knows what he’s doing—well, chief, in these radical Islamic countries, aren’t even respecting basic human rights, when both sides are slaughtering each other as they scream over an arbitrary red line ‘Allah ak-bar’—I say, let Allah sort it out.”
I suspect Cruz would agree with every word, and that her former running mate would disagree with most or all of it. (Palin advocated “Cruz control” for Washington in the speech, in fact.) She doesn’t want any more interventions under a strategist as poor as Obama — but she’s not against intervention in principle. She wants America to listen more to the libertarians, but when it comes to the lousy Gang of Eight bill, she rightly opposes it for its weak border security — even though libertarians are famously comfortable with weak borders. None of this is contradictory; most tea partiers would, I take it, agree that America needs more libertarianism while maybe not quite so much as Ron Paul supporters would prefer. The point is, though, there are real differences between Cruz and Rand Paul and I think we’re getting a hint of one in the clip. And the longer the national debate stays stuck on liberty-versus-security issues, the more obvious I think those differences will be.
Oh, we be rushin’. The Under-30’s just know the Gov has nabbed their sexting photos and they’re P*SSED!!
Church Committee 2.0, here we come!
Both Cruz and Howard Johnson are right.
According to the ‘Mother Church’, there are four “cardinal virtues.”
#1. Prudence.
Cruz:
You couldn’t be more wrong.
The feds absolutely trawl everyone’s communications .
Part of how they do it is to go after a target and request Whole Pipe access to a service providers network.
They have no client to protect and they do not minimize the information collected and stored.
IOW, They do not discard information that is not relevant to the request.
I gave a huge dissertation on the great Laz’s thread Saturday.
I don't deny he has a valid point. But the mere fact that one administration can't be trusted with the power means that we can't trust any of them with the power. Because we'll find out too late when that authority has been misused. So unless Cruz has a scheme on telling in advance when the abuse is going to happen, then for the safety of all our privacy this program has to stop. Now.
I think I saw it, but I might be mistaken; got a link to it?
All
If you want to know what laws make PRISM and other programs possible, as well the technology for how the gubmint swallows up everyone’s information go here
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3031768/posts?page=79#79
Cruz is wrong here...as the govt does not need to snoop on my elderly parents to find Islamic Terrorists
Although Cruz can be trusted to respect American citizens privacy......99.8% of his fellow pols cannot be trusted....which is why NSA is bad news
A lot of people on TV and many in the government are saying the feds NSA are not reading the content of our calls and emails so I expect this is those who want more proof. Cruz was the assistant attorney general for Bush. He said last week there were concerns of overreaches. Some, want the NSA to stop gathering Intel but that’s not what I am advocating. I am in support to do so under the constitutional authority. We face citizens who are completely in support of doing this. Low info voters etc. It depends on how one looks at this and how they decide to allow the court to rule.
The gov spies on us and not the terrorists and we aren’t supposed to have an opinion, Ted?
A Cruz statement from The Blaze last week:
“If it is the case that the federal government is seizing millions of personal records about law-abiding citizens, and if it is the case that there are minimal restrictions on accessing or reviewing those records, then I think Mr. Snowden has done a considerable public service by bringing it to light.”
What happened?
I read the first paragraph, which was not easy.
then skimmed the rest.
Found just nothing that quoted Cruz.
So. . .
Cruz:
The revelations are “cause for concern” but urges Fox viewers to reserve judgment until we know more about the programs.
IOW, Ted Cruz -- already holding three aces -- is purposely understating the crushing revelations. Waiting for additional and more incriminating evidence of the trashing of the 4A by Big Brother and 0dinga.guv, then lower the boom on those responsible is clever. This demonstrates Cruz's patience and fairness.
“but urges Fox viewers to reserve judgment until we know more about the programs”
WTF. We know enough:
Exclusive: Inside Account of U.S. Eavesdropping on Americans
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3029872/posts
I hope Cruz doesn’t turn out to be a sell out.
I had a dream.
Off in the distance and approaching rapidly was a bus. Despite the distance I could clearly read a logo on the front of the bus.
The logo reads FREEREPUBLIC.COM
Standing beside the road I see Sarah Palin, Rand Paul and Ted Cruz. They are discussing the latest NSA revelations. They are waiting for the bus, clearly with some apprehension. Sarah is heard to say “Who will be next ... So many”.
The bus draws closer, bearing down on our favorite three.
In a flash our favorite three becomes our favorite two. Sarah and Rand breath a sigh of relief. As the bus passes we catch our last glimpse of Ted, neatly positioned under the speeding bus
One problem is we let the left dictate “language” hence profiling is bad when in effect it is the best route to pursue any investigation/action. If your perpetrators are one-legged, red haired, white women over 40 why do you need to appear to be non-discriminating, it defies logic. Most illegal immigrants are mexican or some sort of latino, most all terrorists are muslim, see the pattern...
Why do Conservatives insist on eating their own? Why the endless fault finding with fellow Republicans over narrow issues?
You guys think you are fighting over the soul of the Republican Party, but you are really killing its body.
What more do we need to know? Just going by what has already been admitted (and we know it's worse than that) these surveillance techniques are as broad and overreaching as we can possibly imagine.
Am I supposed to feel better if they're archiving every electronic conversation I have, in perpetuity, as long as they promise not to ever misuse that information?
"Trust me, it's all for your own good" is a favorite excuse of the power-hungry Tyrant. The Founders, and rightly so, knew that, on general principle, such power should never routinely be placed in the hands of government! The potential for abuse is simply too great.
That's why they (and the People) tried to make it difficult, if not impossible, for Tyranny to arise even in the future, by adopting the Bill Of Rights, for example, and by crafting a Constitution which severely limited Federal power and responsibility.
Perpetual War Powers were specifically seen as a great threat to Liberty, and rightly so.
The loony left and the loony right cancel each other out. It's a wash.
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