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Republicans Block Latest Attempt At Curbing NSA Power
Robotron23 writes: The latest attempt at NSA reform has been prevented from passage in the Senate by a margin of 58 to 42. Introduced as a means to stop the NSA collecting bulk phone and e-mail records on a daily basis, the USA Freedom Act has been considered a practical route to curtailment of perceived overreach by security services, 18 months since Edward Snowden went public. Opponents to the bill said it was needless, as Wall Street Journal raised the possibility of terrorists such as ISIS running amok on U.S. soil. Supporting the bill meanwhile were the technology giants Google and Microsoft. Prior to this vote, the bill had already been stripped of privacy protections in aid of gaining White House support. A provision to extend the controversial USA Patriot Act to 2017 was also appended by the House of Representatives.
A watered down version of the original bill with the name "FREEDOM" in the very title still couldn't pass muster once the WSJ put the words "terrorist" and "ISIS" next to it.
"I'd just like to emphasise that taking a million years isn't a metaphor here..." -Rich Bradshaw
Wait...
Remember that ISIS is our enemy now. They have always been our enemy.
Ignore those who say they used to be our ally in Syria and we were sending them weapons and aid. They want the T E R R O R I S T S to win!
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
A couple more Republican's voted against it than Democrats.
Obamacare passed without one Republican vote in the House or the Senate. When was that last called a Strictly Partisan Bill?
Have fun assigning blame to the Republicans, but its a Democrat in the White House that is violating our privacy, and can stop any second he wants to.
It's a Democrat in the White House that has expanded the intrusion on our privacy to new and unimagined levels in America.
con: did not address NSA privacy concerns
pro: did not extend the USA PATRIOT Act
I am filled with a deep sense of schadenfreude as I watch the US drive itself into the ground.
https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=113&session=2&vote=00282
As you can see, it was pretty much along party lines.
So, the party who is against the government to interfere with people lives, is the party who interfere with people lives.
Just wondering, I can't seem to find them.
I found this, but the last action mentioned was when it was introduced on 10/29/2013.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/...
Seems like the right link, I'm guessing it hasn't been updated.
BlameBillCosby.com
Here's a question? How many terrorists are stupid enough to discuss their plans on Facebook, Myspace, and freaking Instagram? Not to mention unencrypted cell phones and texts? NOBODY is that stupid!
ISIS will be running amok in the US... the FBI and CIA will be recruiting and funding gullible fools to do these "acts"... all so they can catch them and say look ISIS is running amok...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
The Dems (including Obama) expanded and extended the patriot act at a time when they could have pushed it through with little resistance.
As much as the talking heads are going to try to make this seem like a partisan issue the fact of the matter is that there is heavy bi-partisan support for controlling the slaves of the USA and any resistance to this is largely lip service to keep the sheep filling the party coffers.
How many times do we have to go through the "It's the Democrats!" "No, no, it's the Republicans" mantra before we get sick of the game and smash the established sacred idols of the jackass and the elephant? We, The People, have become of the dog chasing its own tail. The sad thing is that the vast majority think that they're fighting the good fight when they're just being kept busy while the real powers that be loot and pillage.
Those dummies.
From the WSJ article: "the former head of the National Counterterrorism Center, Matthew Olsen, disclosed in September that terrorists tracked by U.S. intelligence services have started encrypting their communications in ways that defeat detection, and that the government has lost track of several."
Not sure how the continued bulk collection is going to help anyone.
Like the Patriot Act before it, we should all be wary of any bill named (so stupidly) the USA Freedom Act.
Is this slashdot or CNBC? what happened to news for nerds?
Snowden humiliated the ruling elite of America by exposing their dirty secrets. Passing these kind of bills would be an admission of guilt. A "traitor" and a "Russian spy" (as Americans call him) will never prevail in the glorious, free, democratic, and #1 country of America.
So, all these people who say the Democrats are the party of government surveillance, and the Republicans aren't ... what's your answer to this?
My answer is that both parties have decided that security at any costs, and privacy be damned is the way of the future.
So can we stop having this surveillance crap be a matter of "your party did it" and realize they're all willing to do this crap?
Or would that interfere with your need to blame someone else? Both parties are clearly unwilling to stop this crap.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Well sort of.
It's so that they can politically grandstand coming and going: "democrats brought a bill helping terrorists" and simultaneously to other voters "We blocked that bill because it was watered down and wouldn't protect the country".
And if it wasn't for the numerous powerful members of their party who'll be delivering that first argument, the second would be a pretty valid fucking point.
The problem is that people need to understand the dynamics of the nation as it's currently structured. It's not a nation-state, it's become a full-fledged empire while retaining the symbols and trappings of being a nation, and this distinction needs to be internalized before trying to understand the incongruity of how things are done these days. Neither political party will take even the first step to dismantling that power structure, for many reasons which are beyond the scope of this post. Suffice it to say that it would be unrealistic to expect much significant "change" out of the Republicans over the next couple of years, and even if they manage to take the presidency while holding onto Congress, things are unlikely to change. It will not be until we come to the end of our ability to sustain the American empire that we will see a drastic shift in how things are done, because they will no longer be able to ignore reality and force their will on the world.
That Republicans were against BIG government... It seems that perhaps their version of the Bill Of Rights doesn't have more than the first 2 amendments: The first which allows them and their accomplices in the Democratic party to collect legal bribes as a matter of "free speech" and the second which guarantees guns for everyone except young black males. Those pesky 4th and 14th amendments are clearly a bridge too far...
Makes me almost nostalgic for the days when the dread terror that was going to kill us all in our beds at least had a navy, air force, and nukes. Yes, as it turned out all three were hopelessly inferior to ours and they were never about to attack, merely paranoid that we were about to; but still, they looked pretty scary and only a millionth as much surveillance was justified by it.
But every President of every party seems to become President of Fear upon taking office, even Mr. Constitution Professor. The notion that they are "Commander if Chief" of all those dozen defense and security and spook agencies is a little comical; it's clear who really gives the orders.
I always identified as a republican.. a moderate -- but still republican.
Not anymore. :(
Hey guys, Obama's approval rating is in the toilet partially because of the NSA scandal? You know what we should do? HOP ON BOARD!
I have this vague hope that it was a republican attempt to let much of the patriot act sunset. Gridlock is good, in this case.
Seriously. (and it's not only in US). If *any* person did the same thing, the courts would be all over them. But when NSA or CSIS do it it's OK?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...
I've got better things to do tonight than die.
Again, I ask you: did anyone read the article?
Both Democrats and Republicans voted against this bill. So this was, tongue in cheek, a bipartisan effort against liberty. For what it's worth, Democrat Mark Udall seems to have opposed it because it doesn't do enough, which can be a frustrating, yet respectable position.
But the days when at least every other Slashdot headline and summary actually reflected what was contained in the article are gone. So you TL;DR types dominate the discussion with nonsense partisanship that is not based on fact. And that fact is that, as usual, the schmucks in charge value their power over liberty and do not serve us.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
You got that *half* right...
From the freaking summary:
"A provision to extend the controversial USA Patriot Act to 2017 was also appended by the House of Representatives."
The title of the bill is misleading. It says it is to curb power, but then it extends the Patriot Act at the same time.
It was two votes from passage. An effective whip might have got this one through if they put some effort into it.
I wonder if maybe attaching a PATRIOT extension to the bill might have anything to do with it dying.
Oh, and need we point out that Republican votes were required to get it out of the house and all that failed was a cloture vote to cut off debate...
Not to mention that a number of Republicans actually voted FOR cloture...
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Could you explain why you voted against the USA Freedom Act as well as why your vote isn’t in direct contradiction to your Oath of Office to uphold the Constitution of the United States, and in this case, the 4th Amendment to the Constitution?
I would also be interested in your views regarding when liberty should be sacrificed for security.
Do you believe that any of our actions in the Middle East or elsewhere have increased threat levels against the United States of America? If so, should we consider the consequences of such actions abroad in terms of having to diminish liberties at home to preserve security?
BlameBillCosby.com
These traitors are taking away more freedoms than terrorists.
government? They shit on the constitution every day and nobody can stop them. They impose uncessary laws on us all at the request of big business. No matter who you vote for the outcome is still the same.
Rand Paul said he would refuse to support this bill until the renewal of the patriot act was removed.
your first two lines, regardless of validity/lack thereof, automatically caused ~1/2 the population to emotionally dig in to protect their "guy" and/or pet cause.
regardless of where one stands on immigration, healthcare or even terrorism for that matter it is a simple question of FACT that the NSA is an agency of the executive branch therefore curtailing their power/practices requires nothing more than a phone call stating: "stop doing x or I'll fire you & replace you w/someone who will!".
that's it! it's literally that simple! google Harry Truman pimp slapping Douglas MacArthur...
there is no law (including the infamous patriot act) that explicitly requires the NSA to do what they're doing! this collection is a matter of "interpretation" & the fact that Obama has been unwilling to clarify the bounds of the 4th amendment is 100.0% on HIM, not congress...
Which is why they tried to get rid of the apply to filibuster, which the republican seats were using to stop progress on any bill. For the past two years, the House of Representatives did jack shit, crippling Congress even more. I hope Mitch is happy with his legacy that he seems to care about. Doesn't look too rosy from the stand point of the majority, the independents.
Indeed. People like Rand Paul voted against it because it EXTENDED THE PATRIOT ACT while leaving the worst parts of it in place. But no, the Slashdot hive mind thinks, "OMG LIBBERTERIANS JUST WANT GUBBERMINT, INC."
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
They might not have succeeded with more attention to the issue. If, for example, Slashdot had posted the story, we might be reading a different story today.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
REPUBLICANS did this?
Not so fast. This was obviously written by a partisan hack from the democrat side. How do I know?
1. Republicans do not yet control the senate. Despite having a good election and winning the majority of seats in the senate, they will not be seated until JANUARY 2015. We are in a lame duck congress, meaning the only thing that has changed from before the election is some senators know they are going home soon. The names have not yet changed on the office doors. Democrats are still in control.
2. This bill passed the Republican controlled house, meaning it had to receive at least SOME Republican support.
3. A number of Republican Senators voted for cloture on the bill which required 60 votes. This means there where democrats that DID NOT vote for cloture.
So, Why would Slashdot engage in something so obviously partisan and blame Republicans? Shame on you. This bill's fate was decided by both sides, not just one.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
This bill extended some of the worst parts of the Patriot Act until June 2017. Voting for this means voting for the Patriot Act. How many of you read past the bills title?
The NSA supported this bill. Various whistle blowers signed a joint letter against it.
http://fdlaction.firedoglake.c...
The original version several months ago had some significant good points, but after negotiations with the administration removed the primary protections, what was left was mostly a bill extending the Patriot Act. Republicans might be right to vote against this and let the Patriot Act expire.
Geeze, we couldn't get TWO votes...one of which was a Democrat? (Nelson of Florida)?
Two things you never want to see manufactured. Sausage, and Legislation.
Lawmakers get paid to apply an angle to anything to get legislation that benefits them and screws everyone else through all the time. That is their role. You can attack the Affordable Care Act all day long, but how much has the public been lied to over the Invasion of Iraq, The PATRIOT Act, and so many many more pieces of legislation over the years.
Lincoln's most recent film exposed deception back in the Civil War to free the slaves.
Social Security was built around the idea that the average life span was 64 years old, so if you happen to be one of the lucky few that make it that far, congratulations, you earned a check. For those who passed away before then, too bad, so sad.
Insurance is built around the same principle by default. The key problem with Insurance is that the younger generation didn't have enough money to keep the Insurance companies afloat and because many younger people such as myself see insurance as not all that important, we would skip on that until it was needed. Fortunately I managed to gain employment at a company that will provide coverage before I needed any serious surgery.
Place something witty here
It's probably important to note that the vote was not 58 against and 42 for. It was 58 for and 42 against, with 60 "yes" votes needed for passage.
I could have sworn we already passed something like this that contained wording that prevents Government and Law Enforcement from accessing the citizen's personal property and documents without probable cause and a warrant...wasn't it called The Constitution or something?
Honestly? In its final form? The FREEDOM act was BADLY compromised. To the point where it would, in some ways, be achieving the OPPOSITE of the bill's original intent and could compromise our rights
I'd rather a bill like that get left on the floor.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
It is at this point where any remaining heavy hitting documents within the Snowden cache should start surfacing. ( assuming any with any weight still remain undisclosed )
:)
Our leadership loves to promise one thing and always deliver another if left to their own decisions. The only way things will get fixed is via major pressure from all angles. Sadly, one of the few ways left to us is through the disclosure of incredibly damning evidence until they start doing the jobs they are supposed to be doing.
The other method involves the Second Amendment, but no reason to go there yet if we still have other options open to us
So ! That said, to the folks who control the box of secrets, it's time to let another Genie out of the bottle so the folks in charge get it through their head we want this fixed.
Are you people going to blame the republicans for that too? They work together, people. Republican and democrat are one, a monolithic entity. Notice you don't have one single independent in the house. May as well be Russia or China. Get over this crap. If you want anything to happen at all, you have to vote the party out of power. That thought shouldn't be too difficult to comprehend.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Sounds like the most crucial parts were stripped out to get the President's pre-approval. What party is Obama from, again?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Governments everywhere in the world demanding or assuming massive surveillance powers to employ a massive dragnet on communications of their own citizens are lying if they say they are doing it to protect them against enemies of the state. Enemies of the state who actually are interested in subversion are already using a 2048-bit PGP encryption, and then embedding the encrypted text using steganography in an image of Santa Claus on his sleigh flying over snowy hills and sending that as a season's greeting email. The government is never going to break the encryption even if Santa Claus left the self portrait in a stocking over the defense/home ministry's fireplace. The people that they really are targeting are you and me - ordinary people on whom they want leverage, just in case we turn troublemakers.
The Dems are still the majority in the senate. They could have passed it if they wanted.
So Soulskill is a fucking partisan liar trying to put the blame on the republicans
How is this 'offtopic'??? The damn summary singles out the republicans. Why do people insist on carrying on this charade? The ruling party in DC is a monolithic party, with factional bickering being foisted on the public as actual opposition. How silly can you get?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
King Obama will use executive action to expand the welfare class, but King Obama will not use executive action to curb the NSA.
No more constitutional scholars please, next time we need an idiot we can keep in check.
> "My name is in [the NSA database] along with everybody else's. But frankly, I'm not worried because I don't talk to terrorists."
If you ever needed evidence of just how spoiled and self-centered Congresspeople are, there you go. Just cover your eyes and ears and pretend you won't be the next one accidentally or falsely charged by an overreaching system. Then keep pretending you're for "small government" on the other hand so you get voted in again.
It's definitely shameful on the Republican's part, but notice the interesting exceptions:
Ted Cruz and Mike Lee are among the most vilified republicans in the Senate by the mainstream media, and both voted against the majority of their party and for the bill. These vilified "tea party extremists" seem to be being vilified, at least partly, for actually doing their job and representing the people.
The bill wasn't perfect - it when nowhere near far enough - and extending the Patriot Act was a poison pill for some (Rand Paul), but to filibuster it is stupid.
Now people just assume it will be filibustered and it won't pass. No wonder congress can't get anything done.
This was not the "limit the NSA" act, it was the "extend the PATRIOT bill" act. It's a good thing that it got killed.
Let's try again for something better in the next Congress.
That is just hand-wavy nonsense.
Take libertarian issues honestly one by one, and some are demonstrably quite reasonable, while others are about as screwed up as anything in the Democratic or Republican plank collection. And vice-versa.
For instance, on the Libertarian side, take agency. Let's see you reasonably defend policy that takes agency away from a person when the act at hand is personal (or consensual) and properly informed. Libertarians don't think you can do it (and so far, they've been right... there isn't a reasonable defense for this that's ever been penned to date.)
And in case that's too wordy, here: "You, competent-and-suppposedly-free-adult-person, you want a pizza? No, sorry, we've decided (though in many instances it's perfectly clear we're just lying) it's bad for you. Absolutely no pizza. Furthermore, if you do have one, or make one, or sell one, you're going to jail. For years." Defend that position.
On the Democratic side, the argument is that a healthy nation is a better nation, and it is worth a very significant cost to achieve that. Argue that it isn't.
On the Republican side, one plank states "We oppose the creation of any new race-based governments within the United States." Make an argument for a race-based government. Go ahead, try.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
A couple? Are you fucking retarded? 42 nay votes, all but ONE republican. Every SINGLE one except for one vote was a republican.
You are a fucking moron.
https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=113&session=2&vote=00282
What every article seems to bury if not outright ignore is that this was the vote for cloture, not the bill itself.
Cloture is a vote to end debate and call the question. Under current US Senate rules it takes 60 votes for cloture where it applies. A bill take 51 votes to pass.
Of the 42 votes against cloture, 1 was a Democrat. Of the 58 votes for cloture, 4 were Republicans.
Since the Republicans had enough votes to block cloture, the question could not be called. This means that either debate must continue until quorum fails (fillibuster) or debate is tabled with no vote and the agenda proceeds to the next item.
However, whether the votes against cloture were because the individual senator felt work on the bill is not complete and it would be worse than the status quo or that the individual senator desired to just stall the vote cannot be determined only from the vote results.
Senator Chanbliss is quoted as saying, "My name is in [the NSA database] along with everybody else's. But frankly, I'm not worried because I don't talk to terrorists." Senator Chambliss has obviously never seen the video where an Officer says even the truly Innocent have something to hide.
No. They aren't. Neither individual, or private. Other than as completely batshit legal fictions which no one with an honest interest in individual agency would support for a moment. Corporations, frankly, are imaginary constructs and as such deserve very little legal status, if any (I can't think of any they deserve, actually.)
People are inherently private individuals. Corporations are artificial constructs than have no fundamental initial merit of their own, and at most, they are/become what we make them. If we make more of them than they should be, then we've screwed up. Which is an excellent description of the present situation.
Wrong. I'm a libertarian, and I don't praise corporations at all. Powerful or otherwise. I praise right action and properly allocated responsibility, things that have been excised from almost all corporate behavior by the error path created by the constant need to grow to satisfy shareholder interest, and in no way constrained by the libertarian idea that the corporation's ability to act, along with any person's ability to act in the corporation's stead, should be absolutely firewalled where it causes non-consenting individuals any direct harm, be it physical or in the pocketbook. Or severely punished if it breaches that firewall.
You want to be very careful when you start thinking you know what others consider fundamental based on just a label or two.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
If you want to characterize the surveillance state as "Obama's", just remember, it was Bush's first -- it took a huge leap with the PATRIOT act which was instantiated (inflicted, more like) on his watch, and if the Republicans manage to put an electable candidate up next time around, it'll be theirs. None of which actually solves the problem, because it isn't a presidential issue.
The honest way to characterize it is as Congress's surveillance state since they're the ones who defined it, passed it into law, have not ameliorated it, and will continue it as long as the American Couch Potato Collective keeps leaving them in office.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Well, let's just see if they actually let it expire. So far, their record of keeping intrusive, unconstitutional surveillance in place is pretty consistent. For the children, you know. And terrorists! And OMG immigrants!
But yeah, it'd be awesome if some of this utter crap just went away into the (a) sunset (clause.)
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Those shades are really helping you with your feelings about the future, eh?
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
The funny thing is that congress has set a huge precedent of roundly ignoring the constitution. Ex post facto laws, innumerable tramplings of the bill of rights, effective inversion of the commerce clause, boatloads of laws that are in no way specified or even implied in their enumerated powers... so if the President wants to say "Hey, you, know, you guys simply aren't doing your job, and so [insert action here]" there really isn't much of a reasonable leg to stand on to pose an objection.
And if the country likes what he does, it'll stick, too.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
The latest attempt at NSA reform has been prevented from passage in the Senate by a margin of 58 to 42.
Ok ok, so right now there are 45 Republicans in the Senate. That means that 13 Democrats voted to prevent this bill. I believe that this makes the non-passage of this bill Bi-Partisan. I mean come on! Can you blame Senators who are bought and paid for members of the Republican party from voting along party lines? It is the Democrats who voted against the bill who should be vilified. The Republicans just did what they were elected to do.
The Dems (including Obama) expanded and extended the patriot act at a time when they could have pushed it through with little resistance.
As much as the talking heads are going to try to make this seem like a partisan issue the fact of the matter is that there is heavy bi-partisan support for controlling the slaves of the USA and any resistance to this is largely lip service to keep the sheep filling the party coffers.
How many times do we have to go through the "It's the Democrats!" "No, no, it's the Republicans" mantra before we get sick of the game and smash the established sacred idols of the jackass and the elephant? We, The People, have become of the dog chasing its own tail. The sad thing is that the vast majority think that they're fighting the good fight when they're just being kept busy while the real powers that be loot and pillage.
Granted. Do not mistake my post as support for Obama and the Democrats. Merely pointing out that the GOP need no other reason to oppose something than the fact that Obama supports it. Look back at the last 6 years and tell me I'm wrong.
THE SOFTWARE, IT NO WORKY!!!
Again, I will take the bad Karma hit by championing truth over partizan politics.
For those outside the US, let me explain a few details that make this all misleading.
1. Although the recent elections heavily were in favor of the republicans, the change of power has not occurred yet. The democrats are still in charge of the senate. This means that they decide which bills are even allowed to be introduced. In fact, the democrats have been using this power quite effectively to block all sorts of republican sponsored legislation in the past several years. In order for the bill to be introduced, it had to have the blessing of the democrat majority leader.
,br> 2. The person who technically introduced the bill was a democrat.
3. It was true this vote, like so many votes recently went straight down party lines. Personally, I think this is an absolute tragedy and evil committed by both parties.
4. Many of the republicans who voted to stop the bill, believed that while change is needed, it was too sweeping. I fully appreciate any cynicism on this point, but in a healthy republic, this would be a valid, intelligent point. There really is a line between engulfing too much freedom (as is the case now) to leaving yourself too vulnerable in the harsh light of reality.
5. The democrats have had the power to push through any legislation they want, and could not be stopped for much of the last 8 years. If they really were champions of freedom, as is implied here, they could have done this earlier. Taking all this together, this is yet another gamesmanship type move to grasp power in the most cynical way. I have no patience for either party when they do this crap.
For those inside America, who claim to be smart (i.e. slashdot readers) this is all stuff you should know and should have pointed out, if you were intellectually honest at all. You are not, so I will take my negative mod, again.
"Liberalism is a very noble idea, currently controlled by some very bad people. Be sure you do not get the two confused.
... were also in power when 9/11 happened - the catalyzing event that granted the NSA the ability to spy on us like they do today.
NSA has the same legal rights and protections as you or I to intercept President Obama's e-mails and cell-phone transmissions and farm them out to the highest bidder like the Guardian News Paper or to the US Supreme Court or the Court of the Huge.
Of course, the Iran Contra thing was good fun (as was rolling the democratically elected government there earlier and proping up the Shah, whoops, tee-hee!) as was arming the Afghans to the teeth, casus belli there being the more honorable goal of seeing the Soviets bleed a smidge, oh it blew up (Ojhri Camp) I am shocked, shocked that a few decades of meddling with the corpse of the Ottoman Empire has come to this.
Is Afghanistan catnip for Empires, or what? Err, Syria. Whatever. Let's weaponize the region, harder. In related news, US AID funding to Pakistan (you know, for dams and schools and such fluff) was shut down after there were no more Soviets to shoot in the mid-90s. There's some nice realpolitik.
Wow. Nice try blaming the Republicans for defeat of the bill since, as of today, they are still the minority party.
The (deliberate) ignorance of liberals knows no bounds.
As a libertarian if the Libertarian Party's platform in repealing the EPA was to also repeal all the permissible poisoning limits the government created in order to allow industry to damage everyone around them with impunity, I'd be all for it.
Instead, all signs point to repealing the EPA and then just letting companies spew as much toxic shit as they want, and when it comes time for me to try and prove that they have damaged me, they will deny access to their smokestacks etc so it will become impossible to demonstrate that the benzene causing my cancer came from them.
The chickens come home to roost, so who's fault is this? If the government keeps meddling in the affairs of others what do you think the end result would be down the road, well not good. Instead of relying on Science and Innovation to improve our lives and built a better Nation we go around the world forcing countries to open up their Natural Resources to the hooligans(wall street, banks) so we can keep beefing up the dollar and enrich the few.
You can't stop the abuses of authorized by the PATRIOT Act by extending the deadline for its expiration. That was the true purpose of this bill: a trojan horse to renew that abomination by burying it in a bunch of beuracracy that does nothing to reign in the government.
Yes, the fact that Obama has not clarified the bounds of the 4th amendment is 100% on him.
Just as the fact that congress has *likewise* not clarified the bounds of the 4th amendment is 100% on them.
You know, it's almost as if the government *likes* having power...
Yep. It was 40 Republicans and 1 Democrat voting against cloture. Obviously, it's just as much the Democrats' fault...
I forget, is Slashdot a political propaganda site? Or a tech news site? Sometimes I get confused due to content.
It would seem that even the possibility of bipartisanship is completely dead in America and that the possibility of actually resolving and solving the structural issues is lost in a ratcheting of political "solutions" designed to conceal their real intentions.
It's such a disappointing thing for such a great country when the political parties responsible for the stewardship of the nation can only look after their interests at the expense of everything else.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
A good starting point of presumption is that anything being promoted by our Criminal in Chief is a lie and a deceipt. So when Obama supports this bill when he
has been the principal sponsor of the attack on liberty in this country for 7 years running, it OUGHT to give any thinking person a reason to question.
Amash pulled his support from this bait and switch and issued this warning some time ago:
"From Justin Amash facebook page back in May:
Justin Amash
Government Official 92,545 Likes
May 22
Today, I will vote no on #HR3361, the #USAFREEDOMAct.
I am an original cosponsor of the Freedom Act, and I was involved in its drafting. At its best, the Freedom Act would have reined in the government's unconstitutional domestic spying programs, ended the indiscriminate collection of Americans' private records, and made the secret FISA court function more like a real court—with real arguments and real adversaries.
I was and am proud of the work our group, led by Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, did to promote this legislation, as originally drafted.
However, the revised bill that makes its way to the House floor this morning doesn't look much like the Freedom Act.
This morning's bill maintains and codifies a large-scale, unconstitutional domestic spying program. It claims to end "bulk collection" of Americans' data only in a very technical sense: The bill prohibits the government from, for example, ordering a telephone company to turn over all its call records every day.
But the bill was so weakened in behind-the-scenes negotiations over the last week that the government still can order—without probable cause—a telephone company to turn over all call records for "area code 616" or for "phone calls made east of the Mississippi." The bill green-lights the government's massive data collection activities that sweep up Americans' records in violation of the Fourth Amendment.
The bill does include a few modest improvements to current law. The secret FISA court that approves government surveillance must publish its most significant opinions so that Americans can have some idea of what surveillance the government is doing. The bill authorizes (but does not require) the FISA court to appoint lawyers to argue for Americans' privacy rights, whereas the court now only hears from one side before ruling.
But while the original version of the Freedom Act allowed Sec. 215 of the Patriot Act to expire in June 2015, this morning's bill extends the life of that controversial section for more than two years, through 2017.
I thank Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte for pursuing surveillance reform. I respect Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner and Rep. John Conyers for their work on this issue.
It's shameful that the president of the United States, the chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and the leaders of the country's surveillance agencies refuse to accept consensus reforms that will keep our country safe while upholding the Constitution. And it mocks our system of government that they worked to gut key provisions of the Freedom Act behind closed doors.
The American people demand that the Constitution be respected, that our rights and liberties be secured, and that the government stay out of our private lives. Fortunately, there is a growing group of representatives on both sides of the aisle who get it. In the 10 months since I proposed the Amash Amendment to end mass surveillance, we've made big gains.
We will succeed."
Since the Democrats still control the majority of votes in the Senate, how come it is the Republicans that you are blaming???
The jackass party, DumAsCraps are always trying to play the blame game. Well, when race can't be used.
bWithout the OT, you have no god, JC was killed for sins in the OT, so if you discount the OT as you wish to do, then JC did not die for our sins, for the OT Adam and Eve story doesn't exist.
Moreover, the only supernatural being that appears in the NT is Satan. Therefore if you exclude the OT, you are a satanist.
Lastly, JC in the NT offers death to anyone who does not believe in his cause.
But if you drop the OT, then you have no divinity in christ, no god, no reason to thank christ for his death, since there was nothing to do with his death and our state.
Sure a lot of the times people surely cheer lead for their party like it was a sports team. But in all honesty, when one party completely votes against a bill, is it not okay to point that out?
>"Republicans Block Latest Attempt At Curbing NSA Power"
Really? But let's see how it did in the House:
R yes: 179 D yes: 124
R no: 51 D no: 70
So in the house, a lot more Republicans voted yes than Democrats. And a lot less Republicans voted no than Democrats. So it seems like if there were a powerful Republication partisanship agenda on this, how does one explain the vote in the House?
In matters such as these (government spying, civil liberties, etc), I have noticed that things are rarely clearly partisan.
The NSA surveillance is done under a Democrat administration.
All these little libbie wimps getting damp in their orifices about the fact the Repubs did not vote.
IT IS THE FUCKEN DEMS WHO ARE RUNNING THE SHOW. FUCKEN IDIOTS.
There are things in the bill that they might not wanted to support? Read the bill or look and see if there things in there that may have been even worse. Things get crammed into bills like this all the time and no one knows about them until it's too late.
The headline says "Rethugnicans BLOCK BILL!"
Uh, the Democrats control the Senate and have a majority. The Republicans don't take over until 2015. Or are we already blaming them for everything?
Oh, wait, sorry... that's what we've been doing all along, even when the Democrats could pass bills without a single Republican vote (2008-2010).
Murphy was an optimist