What Was the Effect of Rand Paul's 10-Hour "Filibuster"?

An anonymous reader writes: Sen. Rand Paul held up a vote on the Fast Track Authority for an eleven hour dissertation on the flaws of: the Patriot Act, the replacement the USA Freedom Act, bulk data collection including credit card purchases, the DEA and IRS's use of NSA intel. for "parallel construction", warrant-less GPS bugs on vehicles, as well as the important distinction of a general warrant versus a specific one. "There is a general veil of suspicion that is placed on every American now. Every American is somehow said to be under suspicion because we are collecting the records of every American," Paul said. The questions is what did the "filibuster" really accomplish? The speeches caused a delay in Senate business but it's unclear what larger effect, if any, that will have.

Comments

Re:Sadly not much

[Anonymous Coward]

The senior senators have more to hide that the NSA already knows about.

And if anyone thinks that isn't at least a factor, I may have some shares in a bridge for sale.

Re:Thank you - just PR for his presidential run.

[funwithBSD]

Here is why:

One: He is forcing the cloture vote on this to be next week, there is not time (its complicated) for the cloture vote to happen before the NSA must shut down the program.
Other business, like the pending trade agreement will have to be dealt with to come back to the NSA.
So for at least one weekend, there will be no NSA spying, and they will have to get it back on line if and when it is reauthorized. Inertia is our friend, if it is down, there will be pressure to keep it down.

Two: He also prevented it from passing cloture by unanimous consent, which is really silence. The chair asks a variation of "Without objection, so ordered" and if everyone is silent, it passes. There are no up/down votes, so no up/down vote is recorded

Now people are going to vote yea or nay, and THAT will be on the record for the next election.