Are you starting to get the feeling, like I am, that the Patriot Act renewal/reform is shaping up as another instance of the now-emblematic Mitch McConnell "bold conservative on the outside/RINO sellout on the inside" kind of caper?
In a nutshell: the Senate Majority Leader has been making a lot of noise about wanting a "clean" renewal of the Patriot Act in toto, including its "controversial" Section 215 surveillance provision that a federal court struck down recently. The House of Representatives, however, balked at such a "clean" renewal, and (barely) amended the Patriot Act to remove Section 215, with much sentiment for abolishing the Patriot Act altogether. That bill (the "USA Freedom Act") was sent over to the Senate.
Now if you're Mitch McConnell, and you want as much of the Patriot Act as possible left in place, and the handwriting is on the wall that the House is never going to renew Section 215, what do you do? Hold your ground and try to force them to restore it and pass a "clean" renewal, which has zero chance of passing, or do you take what you can get, pass the USA Freedom Act, and present a united front to a POTUS not likely to sign either one? And then embark on the task of rebuilding the case for a full Patriot Act restoration? One would think the latter, as the former is quite clearly futile brinksmanship that is most likely to blow up in the elderly Campbell's Soup kid's face.
Guess which option Mitchie The Kid selected?:
To save the Patriot Act’s expiring spying powers, Mitch McConnell is risking letting them die entirely.
And it’s not just one gamble that the Senate majority leader is taking. He’s placing two bets.
By announcing Tuesday that he will allow a vote on a House-passed measure that would effectively end the National Security Agency’s bulk collection of Americans’ call records, McConnell’s grand strategy to block substantive surveillance reform came into clearer focus. …
But McConnell has no desire to see the USA Freedom Act — a measure he repeatedly has denounced as something that could help terrorists kill Americans — pass. Instead, he hopes to watch it fail to accrue the sixty votes necessary to advance. That could jolt more senators toward his preference of extending unhindered the Patriot Act’s three surveillance provisions due to expire June 1st.
Such a sequence — a vote on the Freedom Act followed by a vote for a clean renewal — could give McConnell what he wants. But in addition to banking on the Freedom Act’s failure, McConnell is gambling that the Senate can move quickly enough to catch House lawmakers before they skip town Thursday.
That "grand strategy" is unlikely to succeed in any case, but especially in such a compressed timeframe. Once again, Senator McConnell has painted his majority into a corner where they dither and dilly-dally until the last moment thinking that that will force his opponents' hand, only to find that opponent not at all impressed with his brinksmanship and perfectly willing to call his bluff. It's non-existent planning and incompetent leadership at best; at worst, one has to wonder whether McConnell really is willing to, or actively wants, to jettison the Patriot Act altogether and, just as with DHS Obamnesty funding and the Loretta Lynch Attorney-General nomination, is seeking maximum political cover for doing so by talking and blustering one way while setting up that stance for a preordained, and crushing, defeat.
And I say that as a supporter of a "clean" Patriot Act renewal, a la Senator Tom Cotton. But I also can read the political tea leaves and the direction in which their winds are blowing. It's frankly astonishing to me that PA has lasted as long as it has, particularly in the Age Of The One. Now the pendulum has swung back, public complacency has returned, and voters are demanding that our guard be let down once more. No argument is going to regain the public's attention except another mass-casualty jihadist attack, and maybe not even then, as the Garland, Texas, near-miss illustrated.
Against that backdrop, "USA Freedom Act" sounds like a bargain. And yet Senator McConnell is setting things up for the killing of the Patriot Act altogether.
And speaking of the aforementioned Reichsfuhrer Lynch:
The Patriot Act provisions that have allowed the National Security Agency to vacuum up Americans’ phone records officially expire on June 1st. But the Obama administration says the NSA must begin preparing to end its bulk-telephone-spying program as soon as Friday.
A Justice Department memo circulated among congressional offices Wednesday and obtained by National Journal said Congress needs to fully settle its differences over the expiring spy provisions this week in order to avoid an operational interruption to the NSA’s mass-surveillance program, which was exposed by former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden two years ago.
“After May 22nd, 2015, the National Security Agency will need to begin taking steps to wind down the bulk-telephone-metadata program in anticipation of a possible sunset in order to ensure that it does not engage in any unauthorized collection or use of the metadata,” the memo states.
And the best part? The Regime can legitimately say that they're just following the law. And it'll be Mitch McConnell who provided their political cover and spared his majesty the bother of having to veto a renewal, clear or otherwise.
C'mon, Mitchie. If you're serious about PA, get what you can before time runs out. And if you're not serious....well, we already figured that out.
No comments:
Post a Comment