~ “I hope we once again have reminded people that man is not free unless government is limited. There’s a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: as government expands, liberty contracts.” Ronald Reagan.
Left out of that whole conversation about President Donald Trump and his transition team and family being spied on is a discussion about the government spying on every American citizen.
We need to deal with this and not allow the D. C. establishment to sweep actions that infringe upon our fourth amendment liberties under the rug with their calls for a witch trial of the century against a sitting president.
As former SEnator, Rand Paul says, “it is not only illegal and unconstitutional, it is immoral.”
If Rand Paul’s 10 1/2 hour filibuster against the Patriot Act proved nothing else, it confirmed that Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell is no different than his fascist predecessor, Harry Reid.
McConnell who supports both the Patriot Act and Obamatrade had planned to bring the latter to the Senate floor last night (Wednesday) for a vote but due to Paul’s filibuster, McConnell moved the vote back until 10 a.m. this morning in addition to closed debates on Obamatrade and not permitting any amendments to the legislation.
McConnell and his pro-Obamatrade allies have blocked allowing votes on two separate amendments to Obamatrade from Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) —ones that would block a “living agreement” contained within the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) that Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) would fast-track and would stop President Obama from being able to turn trade deals into a dream immigration package for the Wall Street donor class. What’s more, there’s now talk that McConnell might not even allow a vote on a messaging amendment from Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX)—one that wouldn’t even fix the immigration and guest worker problems in trade deals—even though it’d probably, because it has no teeth, pass the Senate nearly unanimously….
ALL three cable news networks going with Goodell presser over Rand Paul filibuster of the Patriot Act.. Obama must have given Goodell a call — el Sooper ن (@SooperMexican) May 20, 2015
A decision last week about NSA spying by a panel of judges on the United States Court of Appeals in New York City sent shock waves through the government. The court ruled that a section of the Patriot Act that is due to expire at the end of this month and on which the government has relied as a basis for its bulk acquisition of telephone data in the past 14 years does not authorize that acquisition.
This may sound like legal mumbo jumbo, but it goes to the heart of the relationship between the people and their government in a free society….
Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) seeking the 2016 GOP presidential nomination co-sponsored the USA FREEDOM Act of 2015 along with Senators Mike Lee (R-Utah), Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), Dean Heller (R-Nev.), Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Al Franken (D-Minn.), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Steve Daines (R-Mont.), and Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.)
“A clean re-authorization of the USA PATRIOT Act’s bulk record collection program is not acceptable,” said Sen. Cruz. “It is absolutely critical for Congress to balance the privacy interests of law-abiding citizens against the public’s interest in national security. The USA FREEDOM Act of 2015 strikes the right balance by ending the National Security Agency’s unfettered data collection program and implementing other surveillance reforms, while at the same time preserving the government’s ability to obtain information to track down terrorists when it has sufficient justification and support for doing so. I am pleased to join with Senators Lee, Leahy, and others in this bipartisan reform effort, and I look forward to working with both Republican and Democratic colleagues to see that this bill crosses the finish line. Americans deserve nothing less.”
As Judge Napolitano states in the above article, “How do we know that the Freedom Act is a Band-Aid only? Because the NSA supports it.”
In addition, so does Barack Obama because the legislation passed yesterday is supposedly in line with a proposal made by the despot last March. If Obama supports it, we should all be worried.
Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.), also seeking the 2016 GOP presidential nomination stated earlier this week that he will take a stand for liberty.
Surely to piss many in the Senate from Mitch McConnell down, Paul intends to filibuster the Freedom Act bill when it hits the Senate floor.
“I’m going to lead the charge in the next couple of weeks as the Patriot Act comes forward,” he said in a one-on-one interview with the New Hampshire Union Leader. “We will be filibustering. We will be trying to stop it. We are not going to let them run over us. And we are going to demand amendments and we are going to make sure the American people know that some of us at least are opposed to unlawful searches.”
Well that’s Rand Paul leaving Ted Cruz and other so-called lovers of liberty behind on the liberty scale.
In the November 2014 elections, voters overwhelmingly rejected Barack Obama’s draconian policies from the Affordable Care Act to amnesty to NSA spying and bulk collection of metadata under the guise of thwarting terrorism yet the Progressive Republican establishment continues to embrace unconstitutional tyranny policies.
The latest betrayal is the move to extend the Patriot Act, Section 215 spearheaded by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Intelligence Committee Chair Senator Richard Burr.
The bill numbered S1035 reauthorizes Section 215 the provision in the Patriot Act granting the NSA’ bulk data collection of Americans’ telephone records through 2020.
The move comes as a bipartisan group of lawmakers in both chambers is preparing legislation to scale back the government’s spying powers under Section 215 of the Patriot Act.
It puts McConnell (R-Ky.) and Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.), the bill’s co-sponsor, squarely on the side of advocates of the National Security Agency’s continued ability to collect millions of Americans’ phone records each day in the hunt for clues of terrorist activity….
In addition, McConnell and Burr invoked a Senate rule enabling them to bypass “the traditional committee vetting process and take the bill straight to the floor.”
In addition, McConnell and Burr invoked a Senate rule enabling them to bypass “the traditional committee vetting process and take the bill straight to the floor.”
Surveillance Reform Is a Must for PATRIOT Act Reauthorization
While there may be certain sections of the PATRIOT Act that can be justified under national security grounds, we should not be so quick to surrender our civil liberties out of fear. It would be a simple task for Congress to reform Section 215 and end mass metadata collection once and for all. With this information, the government can piece together massive amounts of details about your personal life….
Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said something he “probably shouldn’t” have Monday. But maybe he just doesn’t want to make the same mistake twice. In an interview with The Daily Beast , Clapper said the American people should’ve been told about the collection of phone records from the beginning. […]
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