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Senators Want Secret Warrantless Wiretap Renewal

Posted by timothy on from the hey-who-can-blame-'em? dept.

An anonymous reader writes "A group of Senators are meeting in secret today, while most people are focused on the 'debt ceiling' issue, in order to try to rush through a renewal of the FISA Amendments Act, which expressly allowed warrantless wiretapping in the U.S. The law isn't set to expire until next year, but some feel that the debt ceiling crisis is a good distraction to pass the extension without having to debate the issue in public. The meeting is being held in secret, but it's not classified, so people can demand to know how their Senator voted."

4 of 198 comments (clear)

  1. And You Know They Will Get It! by Jeremiah+Cornelius · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Welcome to the "new normal" in America, where "Citizen" is a term that is interchangeable with "Felon" or "Enemy".

    --
    "Flyin' in just a sweet place,
    Never been known to fail..."
    1. Re:And You Know They Will Get It! by redemtionboy · · Score: 5, Insightful

      No Libertarian? Regardless, we will never have more than a two-party system until we change the election system. A pure first-past-the-post system will only support 2 parties. If you want more parties you need to eliminate primaries and move to a two-tier run off election system. All candidates are thrown in the ring for the first election, and unless one candidate gets more than 50% of the vote, the top two candidates return for a second election. This election system takes emphasis off of parties and more on the individuals running. Granted, it's not a perfect system, but it's a hell of a lot better than what we've got or a proportional representation system. If you want to see this change happen, it needs to move from the ground up, starting with city elections and moving to statewide. You must first cripple the beast before you attack it.

  2. Re:Which Senators was in the secret meeting? by nschubach · · Score: 5, Informative

    FTA:

            Dianne Feinstein, California (chair)
            Saxby Chambliss, Georgia (vice chair)
            John D. Rockefeller IV, West Virginia
            Olympia J. Snowe, Maine
            Ron Wyden, Oregon
            Richard Burr, North Carolina
            Barbara A. Mikulski, Maryland
            James Risch, Idaho
            Bill Nelson, Florida
            Daniel Coats, Indiana
            Kent Conrad, North Dakota
            Roy Blunt, Missouri
            Mark Udall, Colorado
            Marco Rubio, Florida
            Mark Warner, Virginia

    --
    Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
  3. Re:That explains everything. by the+eric+conspiracy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It was much worse in the Wategate days. You could tell Nixon was a meglomaniac who might start a nuclear war or conduct a coup d'etat to stay in power.

    Congress pretty much rallied together to rid the country of this madman.

    The current budget stuff is pretty sickening, but really is a throwback to earlier times in the republic when politics was pretty disgusting as a normal way of life. It isn't the same level of insanity as having a completely deranged President.