Congress’s Abdication on NSA Oversight, Justin Amash
[Sen. Ron] Wyden, who is on the Senate Intelligence Committee and has access to classified information about the NSA’s surveillance practices, explained that even with the overly broad statutory powers granted to the NSA, “the rules have been broken, and the rules have been broken a lot.”
A recently declassified FISC ruling found that the NSA “frequently and systematically violated” statutory laws governing how intelligence agents can search databases of Americans’ telephone communications and that NSA analysts deliberately misled judges about their surveillance activities in order to get court approval.
Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people.
Nothing like campaigning against a know-nothing Congress on behalf of an imperial presidency.
But using fear talk in order to give the power of life and death to the federal security forces — and their natural antipathy to individual freedom — isn’t remotely conservative.
It’s statist.
Perhaps McCain and Graham hadn’t yet digested the sumptuous peace dinner feast Democrat Obama put on for them and 10 other Republican senators at Plume, a fancy gourmet restaurant in Washington.
McCain and Graham are big government statists who happen to be Rs.
Is it just me or do McCain and his Boy Wonder sidekick Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) bear a growing resemblance to Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy from Sponge Bob Squarepants? Like the version of the GOP they represent, their best days are behind them. Which may well be good news for just about everybody else.
If GOP members of Congress have finally (and mostly reluctantly) signed on to the reality of sequester cuts, the country’s Republican governors seem a lot more bent out of shape at the idea of losing various crumbs from federal coffers.
