Rand Paul is, I'm sure, turning handsprings over this possibility. The rest of us, however, should be deeply troubled by it:
If Congress does not act before June 1 to reauthorize certain provisions of the controversial Patriot Act, which allows the government to collect massive amounts of data on Americans' use of the telephone and Internet, the law will lapse.
Roll Call notes that when the act's provisions came up for renewal in 2011, House Republicans voted overwhelmingly, 196-56, to allow the program to continue. In the Senate, 41 of 45 Republicans and 30 of 48 Democrats voted to continue the program.
But now, conservative groups such as libertarian think tank the Cato Group say conservative legislators may be rethinking their position and could be willing to scrap the contentious Section 215 of the law, which allows the government to vacuum up massive amounts of phone and Internet data and scan it for contact with terrorist groups.
Patrick Eddington, a Cato policy analyst, recently hosted congressional aides at a briefing in an attempt to urge them to get their bosses to oppose renewing Section 215, Roll Call reports.
"They're going to say, 'Pass this or people are going to die,'" Eddington, a former CIA agent, said, adding that he would not ask anyone "to support a solution to the problem we are discussing here today that would increase the risk to the lives of people here at home or our deployed troops abroad," but he said he does not think that is the case with dumping Section 215.
Well, Mr. Eddington, "they" are correct, and you need to be a lot more definitive when you say that you "think" dumping Section 215 won't increase the danger to the homeland from jihadist attack if you expect to convince "them" - or the rest of us, for that matter.
This has the stink of throwing out the baby with the proverbial bathwater to it. Is it really an all or nothing proposition? I understand the concern about the NSA vacuuming up ALL electronic communications - the potential for tyrannical abuses, and as a practical matter, the inefficiency of having to sift through vast mountains of chaff to find the few select kernels of wheat. I also understand the context in which Section 215 was written and is intended to operate. Al Qaeda is still out there. So is ISIS. And Hezbollah. The danger to the homeland has never been greater, due to the anti-American presidency of Barack Hussein Obama.
The Patriot Act, to reiterate and refresh, was an act of restoring vigilance in order to protect American civilians from further jihadist attacks. The problem was not Patriot itself, but the "leader" we elected following the retirement of President George W. Bush. John Adams, second POTUS, said, upon moving into the brand-spanking new White House, "May none but honest and wise men ever rule under this roof." That end is determined solely by We, The People. And in that solemn responsibility, We, The People failed, disastrously, not once, but twice. A POTUS who hates this country and everything it stands for, who has undone all the progress that had been made in the War Against Islamic Fundamentalism, who has strengthened all of our enemies and fatally weakened our own defenses across the board and abandoned our allies carte blanche to where even the French communists are to his right, and who abused that instrument of vigilance against asymmetrical attack for his own corrupt, despotic ends, was kept in power instead of becoming a corrected mistake.
We shouldn't get rid of the Patriot Act and kneecap the NSA from doing the job they were and are supposed to be doing; we should have gotten rid of the POTUS who discredited it and has put our country in mortal peril. We should drain the bathwater and put the baby back in his crib where he belongs.
Instead, the last line of defense may be scrapped at a time when ISIS has told us they're on their way.
Just as Barack Obama intended?
I wonder what Mr. Eddington would "think" about that.
UPDATE: Speak of the devil:
ISIS is operating a camp just a few miles from El Paso, Texas, according to Judicial Watch sources that include a Mexican Army field grade officer and a Mexican Federal Police Inspector.
The exact location where the terrorist group has established its base is around eight miles from the U.S. border in an area known as “Anapra” situated just west of Ciudad Juárez in the Mexican state of Chihuahua. Another ISIS cell to the west of Ciudad Juárez, in Puerto Palomas, targets the New Mexico towns of Columbus and Deming for easy access to the United States, the same knowledgeable sources confirm....
According to these same sources, “coyotes” engaged in human smuggling – and working for Juárez Cartel – help move ISIS terrorists through the desert and across the border between Santa Teresa and Sunland Park, New Mexico. To the east of El Paso and Ciudad Juárez, cartel-backed “coyotes” are also smuggling ISIS terrorists through the porous border between Acala and Fort Hancock, Texas. These specific areas were targeted for exploitation by ISIS because of their understaffed municipal and county police forces, and the relative safe-havens the areas provide for the unchecked large-scale drug smuggling that was already ongoing.
Mexican intelligence sources report that ISIS intends to exploit the railways and airport facilities in the vicinity of Santa Teresa, NM (a U.S. port-of-entry). The sources also say that ISIS has “spotters” located in the East Potrillo Mountains of New Mexico (largely managed by the Bureau of Land Management) to assist with terrorist border crossing operations. ISIS is conducting reconnaissance of regional universities; the White Sands Missile Range; government facilities in Alamogordo, NM; Ft. Bliss; and the electrical power facilities near Anapra and Chaparral, NM. [emphases added]
So ISIS is infiltrating our country - pouring across the border, actually - with the at least implicit assistance of the Obama Regime in order to plan and carry out attacks on both soft targets and tactical and strategic nuclear facilities as well as critical infrastructure.
And Congress is going to....shut down the NSA.
Something is terrifyingly wrong with this picture.
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