POLITICS DAILY
In a setback for the new Republican leadership, the House refused to extend surveillance sections of the Patriot Act that allow government to use roving wiretaps on terror suspects and also gain access to tangible items such as library records.
An unlikely alliance of Republicans and Democrats — joined by a concern for individual liberties — brought the bill down Tuesday night. It mustered majority support in the 277-148 vote, but fell seven short of the two-thirds needed to pass under a speed-up procedure.
Doctor to patient: “You have a weak heart, so were going to have to remove it entirely. You’ll finally be free from the constant beating noise”
I’m glad Micromike isn’t a cardiologist.
“Left BS” translates as quoting the right word for word. Give them enough rope…..
One thing you can take to the bank, if the “patriot act” or, for that matter, the “TSA” even get remotely close to being repealed , you will see a false flag OP that will make 9-11 pale in comparison, thereby “DEMANDING” they are enacted into law permanently…
sigh…
It will pass the next go round under the normal rules but even so this version is pared down compared to earlier versions.
Patriot Act extension to be brought up again on Thursday
“The bill will be brought up again under a “closed rule,” meaning that no amendments can be offered. It will need only a simple majority to pass instead of the two-thirds that was required on Tuesday.”
http://tinyurl.com/6xbwree
Alfie, the Fed’s been around awhile. I’m not sure what you mean about a shadow government.
# 38 Floyd said, “I’m not sure what you mean about a shadow government.”
No worries, Floyd. He doesn’t either. He’s just parroting something he half heard on Alex Jones.
FYI: The Tea Party darling, belle of the ball Michelle Bachmann voted to extend the Patriot Act provisions. So much for her adherence to the Constitution and small unobtrusive government. Say “Security” and she will dump all over an individual’s iberty and privacy.
The “roving” aspect of wiretapping doesn’t bother me much — how else can you follow a cell phone.
(at least as I understand the issue.)
It’s the warrantless part that is profoundly un-American.
(It also bothers me that these same conservatives called me pro-terrorist when I raised this issue during the Bush administration. I suppose it took a black man in office to get the conservatives worried about civil rights but I suppose better late than never.)
It always strikes me as funny that you give someone a “rule” and they adopt it as if there was no other alternative. I have “never” thought my personal “god given” freedoms included anything other than my thoughts and my home. Can I yell out my window and be offended that someone hears me? If not, why is using the telephone to the same effect any different? And either way you take that, what’s the diff with email, facebook, twitter, and other forms of “electronic yelling out the window?”
It was just some activist judges that ruled where the “penumbrum of individual privacy” extended when all the BoR says is dwelling, self, and papers==or whatever it says.
But “somebody” said it, and I believe it and am offended to boot. OMG–it Greg Allan. Thats a coincidence, because you “know” what kind of thinking this represents.
# 43 bobbo said, “…all the BoR says is dwelling, self, and papers…”
I gotta agree. Twitter and Facebook are not private communications. You are “yelling out the window.”
But email and phone calls are essentially private communications. You do not intend to share them with anybody who cares to take a peek.
When the Founding Fathers* wrote, “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures…” I feel if they’d had the foresight to envision telephones and the internet, they would have changed “papers” to “communications”.
After all, what are my “effects”? Is the crap I carry in my pockets? How about the car I drive. My bank accounts? Or the thoughts I share with my friends? I’m inclined to think: e) all of the above.
I’m pretty sure the courts have stated in the past that telephone and telegraph communications are private under the Fourth Amendment and I don’t see it as a stretch to extend the privilege to mobile phones and email.
I think any law that does away with search warrants is not reasonable. If you have reason to believe that I am using the internet to distribute vile granny porn, then you should have to demonstrate that reasoning to a judge and get a warrant not only to look at my hard drive but also to see what I am sending as attachments to my email. It’s all the same bits and bytes.
The greatest offense of all are the National Security Letters wherein you are ordered to cooperate in any way they wish and FORBIDDEN to even seek counsel or let anyone else know about the letter; and done at the whim of Homeland Security. They can violate your 4th amendment right and just about any other and send you to prison if you complain. That’s not the nation I grew up in.
I will vote for whichever candidate for prez who convinces me s/he will actually work to male my country resemble the one I was born into. Not that I want to drive an Edsel but I want to travel between states without being x-rayed. I want to believe when I call up my sweetie and whisper sweet nothings into her electronic ear, that it’s just between us. I want to know that when I come back from working for my country in a foreign land, that I am not automatically considered a terrorist suspect. And a bunch of other things but I’m upsetting myself so I’m gonna stop.
*I read someone once who typoed “foundling fathers” and I thought, what a marvelous oxymoron!
P.S. I see no reason why ‘typo’ should not be a verb! Where’s the damned spelling nazi?
P.P.S. As long as I’m bloviating, I complained a while ago about people who couldn’t bring themselves to type out the word “ass” or other words they considered foul for some reason, choosing instead to insert an asterisk or some other symbol to make it safe. Another blog I visit has the software AUTOMATICALLY type “dam_n” instead of damn! It may do it for other words, too. I’m not sure. But can you think of anything more moranic? “Ooooh, someone might be offended at damn but type dam_n and they won’t understand the obscenity!”
I guess the Tea Party didn’t work in the Republican’s favor, this time. Or were there some other defectors among the GOP that bailed on “locking step” with the new Fourth Reich? In any case, if they don’t succeed with this bill. They’ll merely whip up another, using different words and terms, that does about the same thing. But fools most Congressman and voters into thinking, it the greatest thing since sliced bread, at stopping terrorists. The New New New Patriot Act. Or the House Un-American Activities Committee on Terrorism (HUACT). And while we’re at it, why not bring back McCarthyism and the Blacklist? I’m sure there are a number of Republicans who still believe it was a good idea. Mostly old fogie, “Commies are under every bed”, pseudo-paranoid types. Closet Nazis. As long as it doesn’t ruin the lives of anyone they knew. Violations of others’ personal freedoms are a good thing.
BTW, who’s to say the wire taps won’t continue, regardless of the change in the law? I’m pretty sure they were happening, before it became legal. It was said that FDR had wire taps of certain Japanese Americans, before the start of WW2. And therefore, had some idea that an attack on Pearl Harbor was planned. But it was in violation of the law, at the time. So the evidence was never revealed. Nor acted upon. Of course, some think FDR was happy the US would be attacked. Thus breaking the Isolationists’ hold in Congress.
So far, most of the minor terrorist wannabees, that have been caught, were not the result of any wire tapping. So how is it likely to stop any serious terrorists, in the future?
A turd wrapped in an American Flag is still a turd… This turd is the Patriot Act. I wish it would go away forever because it’s a horrible piece of legislation like something Stalin would have written. They need to get rid of the Military Commissions Act and Rex 84 while they’re at it. One can hope at least…
These, and bills like these, are all strategic political maneuvers to create and establish a control grid over the population of the US – it is obvious to me anyways. And I have a suspicion that the guys at the control board are real a-holes.
# 46 Glenn E. said, “why not bring back McCarthyism and the Blacklist?”
Uhmmmm – can you say TSA?
Greg Allen, I think roving wiretaps means they change the numbers that they are tapping without getting a warrant, not that they move around to follow someone’s phone call.
Seems like the 8 freshmen Republicans spoiled the vote for this to pass. Freshmen Republicans are probably Tea Partiers. I hope the Patriot Act gets completely repealed. I don’t trust Obama to have it.
#32-> You are assuming the government is the heart of the country. It is not. It is a cancer, consuming all resources in an ever growing fashion.
The People are the heart of the country.
Micromike appears to be an oncologist.
Animby–well done. Hard to argue with someone who states well established Supreme Court Law ((Well, until the Patriot Act))–but it is “an interpretation” of the BoR that could “reasonably” go the other way. Is sending a letter more like yelling out a window, or more like having the same letter in your pocket? And actually reading the BoR is always instructive==just what is “an effect?” I’m “ok” with either rule AND the knowledge that anyone is an idiot to expect privacy.
But to repeat–asterisks and lines are used to avoid spam/porn filters.
# 53 bobbo said, “…anyone is an idiot to expect privacy.” You got that right. I just don’t want to see it legislated that we have no privacy.
In case you’re not following the other thread, anymore, I apologized for the asterisk comment. I was not considering the overly delicate sensitivities of the various filters. Still, I would prefer to see some linguistic imagination rather than adulterated expletives. I know you can do it. I will try. I suppose it’s too much to ask of ECA.
Animby–I’ll continue the bifurcation. I very purposefully chose, wordsmithed if you must, f*ck for conveying exactly what I was thinking. No watered down euphemism will do.
Short, direct, gutteral, attached to the gonads.
Le mot juste.
#51 G2 –
Perhaps not the heart but it is a machine set in place by the people, that serves a vital purpose. To throw it out entirely when its malfunctioning makes as much sense as removing a vital organ. Pacemaker, bypass, even transplant – but removal is no solution.
tcc3->”When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another…”
Sometimes that what you have to do.
Keep reading:
“That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”
#56 and 57: that was a long time ago. Messing with the Declaration of Independence is not too likely…
I don’t want anyone to mess with it. I just want folks to read it before using it to justify masturbatory anarchic bullshit.