Consider this a warning to the libertarian-minded that the new Republican congress will lean toward authority as Republicans usually do:
Senate Republicans on Tuesday blocked a sweeping overhaul of the once-secret National Security Agency program that collects records of Americans’ phone calls in bulk.
Democrats and a handful of Republicans who supported the measure failed to secure the 60 votes they needed to take up the legislation. The vote was 58 to 42 for consideration.
Senator Patrick J. Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who drafted the bill, blamed what he said was fear-mongering by the bill’s opponents for its defeat. “Fomenting fear stifles serious debate and constructive solutions,” he said. “This nation deserves more than that.”
Since this bill was supported by Obama, it can hardly have been very radical. But for most Republicans fear of terrorism still trumps our rights:
“This is the worst possible time to be tying our hands behind our backs,” Senator McConnell said before the vote, expressing the concerns of those who argued that the program was a vital tool in the fight against terrorism.
Republicans have had a lot of success trading on dislike of Obama and fears about the state of the country, but they are still the party of W and Romney and have nothing new to offer.
4 comments:
What concerns me most about this domestic surveillance is how long it has been going on and how much longer it will continue. Do it long enough -- maybe too long already -- and it will be so ingrained in our culture and Intelligence and Law Enforcement infrastructures that we may never get rid of it.
Libertarians really don't belong with the GOP and their pious, anti-gay rights. But the current Marxist-bent of the Democrats makes it very hard to vote with Donkeys who think the public is stupid and need megalithic, unaccountable government branches to do their thinking for them. It would be far easier for the GOP to give up the pious crap, than the Dems to give up Marxism.
An anonymous poster making wild claims about "Marxism", and suggesting that the Democrats who voted against an unaccountable national spying program somehow are somehow still secretly plotting to control the masses via unaccountable government programs as part of some agenda to rob people of free will and independent thought.
Amusing.
Yes, I think libertarians are confused about what the Republican Party really stands for. Remember when this fad swept the South of legally mandating that all students address their teachers as Sir or Ma'am?
That was the real core of Republicanism.
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