It's been fun, but my head hurts now and I must sign off and leave this thread to the Paulbots. Carry on.
Posted on 05/26/2011 5:19:38 AM PDT by marktwain
Washington (CNN)-In a rare public display of political and personal acrimony, freshman Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky squared off Wednesday with the powerful Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.
Tempers flared on the Senate floor over how many amendments Paul could offer to a measure extending the main anti-terrorism surveillance law enacted after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States.
Key provisions of that law – the Patriot Act - are due to expire Friday, and the dispute between the two senators threatens to cause a brief lapse of the law. If that happens "it could have dire consequences for out national security," warned Reid, D-Nevada.
"The national security of the United States is at stake, and the junior senator from Kentucky is complaining that he has not been able to offer amendments," said Reid, who supports extending the Patriot Act provisions.
"When the clock strikes midnight tomorrow, we would be giving terrorists the opportunity to plot attacks against our country, undetected," Reid added.
A furious Paul raced to the floor to respond to what he called a "scurrilous accusation."
"I've been accused of wanting to allow terrorists to have weapons to attack America," said Paul, a leading figure in the conservative Tea Party movement. "To be attacked of such a belief when I'm here to discuss and debate the constitutionality of the Patriot Act is offensive and I find it personally insulting."
The disagreement focuses on how many amendments to the bill Paul is allowed to offer, in particular, one aimed at preventing warrantless access to some gun records.
"They are petrified to vote on issues of guns because they know that a lot of people in America favor the Second Amendment to own guns and want to protect it,"
(Excerpt) Read more at politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com ...
Oh gag me with a spoon. Hey dingy, or better yet dense harry, did the Patriot Act stop the Fort Hood shooter?
How about those enumerated in the 1st, 2nd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 9th, and 10th Amendments to the Constitution. Like John Hay said, "The evils of tyranny are rarely seen but by him who resists it," so there are will be a lot of cowering bootlickers that will never realize or care that their liberties have been lost. Hell, there are still insufferable fools that mourn the deaths of V.I. Lenin and Uncle Joe Stalin
I’ll say it slower... That is called appeal to authority. Would you jump off a bridge if Jim DeMint told you to?
Rand Paul is a national treasure.
I’d like to see Paul beat Reid senseless with a cane in the Senate chamber—just to get Reid’s attention that the Tea Party has definitely arrived.
BUMP! Good post!
with the corollary that Rand Paul is the greatest conservative in the Senate!?
“My conclusions are correct. You, and others like you, are willing to trade your freedoms for a will o’ the wisp act that doesn’t enhance security but does rob us of our freedoms and will only grow worse over time. Homeland security needs to be dumped also, another freedom robbing idea from Bush the RINO.”
Exactly.
Establishment politicians, Republican and Dhim alike, let lots of mohammedans in. The mohammedans engage in acts of terror. Logically, the muzzies would be tossed out of the country and no more allowed in. Is that what happened? No. Instead we get the “Patriot Act” and the Dept. of Homeland Insecurity looking in the underwear of Americans at the airports.
The mohammedans have won because our leaders have no spines.
Did you know he attended Netanyahu's speech on Monday?
Really, throwing around unfounded accusations about one of the good guys in Washington DC is pretty irresponsible.
Thousands of cameras installed in and around the majority of intersections, building rooftops, along highways mounted atop lightpoles.
Tomball Texas is one small town that was awarded such a grant. Not only are surveillance cameras being installed, local law enforcement being supplied with what was reported in the local newspaper as a “spy plane”. Advanced equipment upgrades to cruisers and so forth.
The rub for me is the loss of liberty. From the moment you enter the city to the time you leave, citizen movements are monitored.
Recent reports of insurance/registration checkpoints, warrentless searches of homes and the like IMO are alarming.
We must now show our papers to move from point A to point B?
Have WE the people become suspects? Routine traffic stops instantly place drivers in harms way as many officers have become hyper-vigilante, often times over reacting to minor traffic offenses.
Large percentage of crimes are committed by illegal aliens down here in Texas, but there is little effort applied by local law enforcement to detain and or deport people that are causing the crime.
We are losing our liberties in the name of security.
Agreed there would also be a lot fewer members of Congress with the personal integrity of the stereotypical polyesther leisure suit wearing used car salesman.
Yeah, it might even let Al Quaida into the WH... oh, wait...
But, but, I thought the Democrats were AGAINST the Patriot Act! Silly me, I guess that was just when Bush was in power.
Cales 59 is correct and only those with a slave mentality support it. Slave mentality meaning those who wish to have the Government make their day to day decisions for them and who enjoy being publically sexually mauled bt uniformed Government agents. Freedom loving men and women despise it.
It's been fun, but my head hurts now and I must sign off and leave this thread to the Paulbots. Carry on.
They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.The government does not require you fill out a form to pass a stop sign, and does not record which stop signs you pass when. Doing either would, of course, be massively unconstitutional.This was written by Franklin, with quotation marks but almost certainly his original thought, sometime shortly before February 17, 1775 as part of his notes for a proposition at the Pennsylvania Assembly, as published in Memoirs of the life and writings of Benjamin Franklin (1818).
Do keep up with the topic at hand. Going on about newts just gets annoying.
I've worked in military intelligence, contracting and law enforcement. The idea is for you to not realize what you're losing, or even that you're being targeted, until the assault team is breaching your door. Much of the surveillance is intrusive and expansive, and violates any reasonable concept of privacy.
Sure, there's the TSA pat downs (conditioning everyone to think being subject to detainee screening is 'normal'.) and extra paperwork here and there, but the vast majority of the intrusions are invisible, and intentionally so.
After 9/11, the Patriot Act was supposed to be a stopgap while some antiquated laws were updated (FISA being a good example, which was written for the age of copper wire phone lines.) Instead, it fuels a giant public surveillance bureaucracy that spends much less effort than you think going after Islamic terrorism.
All in all, there's a better way to deal with terrorists, and that's by aggressively putting missiles through their roofs and gunning them down like dogs wherever we find them. Nobody is a bigger fan of good intel than I am, but you're fooling yourself if you think this sort of monster is what we need guarding our own house.
There's better ways to deal with Islamic extremism than to make ourselves subject to a police surveillance state.
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