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Senate Passes USA Freedom Act
schwit1 points out that the U.S. Senate has passed the USA Freedom Act by a vote of 67-32, sending it on to President Obama, who is expected to sign it into law. The bill removes mass metadata collection powers from the NSA, but also grants a new set of surveillance powers to replace them. Telecoms now hang on to that data, and the government can access it if they suspect the target is part of a terrorism investigation and one of the call's participants is overseas. "The second provision revived Tuesday concerns roving wiretaps. Spies may tap a terror suspect's communications without getting a renewed FISA Court warrant, even as a suspect jumps from one device to the next. The FISA Court need not be told who is being targeted when issuing a warrant. The third spy tool renewed is called "lone wolf" in spy jargon. It allows for roving wiretaps. However, the target of wiretaps does not have to be linked to a foreign power or terrorism."
Same as the Old Act.
I wanna get fooled again!
Now tell me again why is it that we don't need a third party in this country ?
It's a real pity we can't drop a couple of bombs on Congress. Fucking traitors that they are.
What part of what has been going on did you not understand?
Section 215 of the Patsiot Act, the one that authorized mass metadata collection, sunseted on Monday at 0000 hours because Rand Paul blocked Bitch McConnell railroading in a clean extension. It has been dead since then. Kaput. It was well on the way to being adjudicated unconstitutional anyway, but that has been 13 years coming, and still not 100% settled. Thanks to Rand Paul - and nobody else - that thing is now dead, regardless of whether the constitutionality is ever 100% settled.
It was dead Monday, and it is still dead. The Freedom Act did not re-enact it. Bitch was trying to sneak in an extension so it wouldn't have to be re-enacted, but the son of a bitch got his ass handed to him by Rand. It is no less dead after passage of the Freedom Act horse shit.
The kind of people who are willing to trade security for liberty, correct?
We can still do things to lessen the damages being done.
1. 12 year term limit for members of Congress.
2. Require congressional districts to be compact. See: Iowa. Perhaps even drawn by middle school students.
3. The top six vote-getters of the previous presidential election automatically getting ballot access to the following. This includes independent candidates.
As nice as it would be to have IRV or other voting methods, I feel that should be left up to the individual states. Same goes for how electoral votes are done. However, requiring a run-off really should be required along with moving towards a vote-by-mail option for those who want it. See: Washington state.
A better civics class in middle and/or high school would be nice.
Or any of the many instant-runoff or proportional representation methods. Unfortunately, as hard as the established parties will fight against limits on their wealthy gravy-train, I suspect they'll fight *much* harder against any fundamental changes to the election system they've currently captured. And considering that it would take a constitutional amendment to change the rules, I'd say it' a non-starter until we've managed to take back a measure of control over both congress and the state legislatures.
Actually IIRC it would not take a Constitutional amendment.
The Electoral College which actually selects the President is composed of electors chosen by each state with the specifics of how those electors are chose left pretty vague.
If a state chose to use an instant runoff to decide who get's their EC votes I think the'd be in the clear constitutionally, and if all states did it that way you'd get most of the benefits of the system (encouraged to vote for the best candidate without it "splitting the vote" for the lesser evil of the two big parties).