“Republican presidential candidate Rand Paul commandeered the Senate floor Wednesday to deliver an hours-long protest against renewal of the Patriot Act, calling the post-Sept. 11 law government intrusion on Americans’ privacy,” Donna Cassata reports for The Associated Press.
“Congress faces a June 1 deadline for the law’s expiration, and Paul’s speech underscored the deep divisions over the National Security Agency’s bulk collection of Americans’ phone records, which was revealed by former contractor Edward Snowden,” Cassata reports. “‘There comes a time in the history of nations when fear and complacency allow power to accumulate and liberty and privacy to suffer,’ the Kentucky senator said at 1:18 p.m. EDT when he took to the Senate floor. ‘That time is now, and I will not let the Patriot Act, the most unpatriotic of acts, go unchallenged.'”
“As Paul made his case, a Justice Department memo circulated on Capitol Hill warning lawmakers that the NSA will have to begin winding down its bulk collection of Americans’ phone records by the end of the week if Congress fails to reauthorize the Patriot Act,” Cassata reports. “‘After May 22, 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 department said.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Adhere to the U.S. Constitution.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. — United States Constitution, Amendment IV
Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. – Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759
Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free. – Ronald Reagan, March 30, 1961
Visit the Apple-backed reformgovernmentsurveillance.com today.
Related articles:
Apple, others urge Obama to reject any proposal for smartphone backdoors – May 19, 2015
U.S. appeals court rules NSA bulk collection of phone data illegal – May 7, 2015
In open letter to Obama, Apple, Google, others urge Patriot Act not be renewed – March 26, 2015
Apple, Google, others call for government surveillance reform – December 9, 2013
Apple’s iOS encryption has ‘petrified’ the U.S. administration, governments around the world – March 19, 2015
Obama criticizes China’s demands for U.S. tech firms to hand over encryption keys, install backdoors – March 3, 2015
Apple CEO Tim Cook advocates privacy, says terrorists should be ‘eliminated’ – February 27, 2015
Apple’s Tim Cook warns of ‘dire consequences’ of sacrificing privacy for security – February 13, 2015
DOJ warns Apple: iPhone encryption will lead to a child dying – November 19, 2014
Apple CEO Tim Cook ups privacy to new level, takes direct swipe at Google – September 18, 2014
A message from Tim Cook about Apple’s commitment to your privacy – September 18, 2014
Apple will no longer unlock most iPhones, iPads for police, even with search warrants – September 18, 2014
That’s a great quote from Ronald Reagan in the “MacDailyNews Take”. But context is important. Reagan made that famous quote in a video he made to speak out against the creation of Medicare, one of the most significant and popular programs that the United States has ever created.
Medicare was a horrible mistake. It’s one of the biggest programs whose costs have bloated to the point where the USA’s national debt can never be paid off.
-jcr
Medicare isn’t the problem. We were actually making great progress on the national debt until a certain dimbulb decided we needed an unfunded war in Iraq.
How long are you gonna trot out that dead horse. This isn’t about one guy or even one party. We have a system of government run by special interests and the mega rich. Our economy is based entirely on funny money but no one wants to run a campaign on that…just kick the can down the road a few more years. Medicare and social,security are safety nets which have been stretched way beyond their original purpose. They were never intended to be the sole income and healthcare for half the country.
Bernie.
The most expensive blunder in US history and the NeoCons are already pushing to bury it down the memory hole. How is it that so many could be so wrong so consistently about so much and have anyone take them seriously ever again?
Iraq is not a Dead Horse. The troops who lost lives, limbs or were wounded will bear the scars for easily another 80 years. The families disrupted will bear the imprint for generations.The citizens of the United States will be paying for the NeoCon war of choice fought on borrowed money for generations. Children not yet born will be taxed to service the debt from this war and will grow up in a poorer America as a result of the ill guided policy. The Christian community of Iraq- one of the oldest in the world- was decimated by Dubya’s Misadventure and will never get their lives back. Iraq is a basket case and the nation has moved backwards in the social position of women and minorities due to Bush’s policy. The whole Middle East has been destabilized due to NeoCon fallacy.
Medicare is an insurance system paid for by it’s own premiums. Bush’s Iraq War was a political misadventure precipitated upon lies, private agendas, profiteering by politically connected contractors and misguided NeoCon echo chamber fantasy. Hardly comparable.
“How long are you gonna trot out that dead horse.”
How about until the debt for those wars is off the books? That seems fair.
But for now squabbling about causes and priorities achieves nothing, even when it is well meant. We will never have a consistently balanced budget until there is a Balance Budget Amendment:
I suggest all proposed congressional budgets must under 90% of revenue with 10% going into a discretionary buffer for disasters/wars/whatever to avoid automatic tax increases. When the discretionary fund hits 100% of GDP then taxes begin to automatically drop.
I suggest a 12 year transition period, so there is no spending cliff to force bad snap decisions and there is time to prioritize/reprioritize spending over three administration terms.
Then productive squabbling about how that will be met can commence.
Any politician/citizen who talks about budgets, deficits and debts but doesn’t actively promote a balanced budget amendment is looking for an argument not a solution. You don’t fix an engine by oiling up just one part. The whole thing has to be designed to work.
Wrong. Even if you did actually know the numbers if you want to bitch about budgets talk about the bloated I’m,Italy budget and corporate giveaways. Besides, some of us are trying to live in a civilized modern country not some republicans dystopia. Besides, you will be the first to use it if you need it.
Darwin, the left wants to expand Medicare into a national healthcare system. I would say that if we wanted to have nationalized healthcare, we should set up a system from scratch, not use something that wasn’t designed to handle that. I’m not in favor of purely nationalized healthcare, but I could be persuaded to change my mind, potentially, but not if it is done in a half-ass politically expedient and inefficient way.
“not if it is done in a half-ass politically expedient and inefficient way.”
Blame the Republicans and some of the Democrats then. If you thought the former were being ridiculously unreasonable *now*, trying every legal trick in the book to try and repeal the ACA even with the (obviously pointless) compromises made to try appeasing them, you can bet a proposal for properly done system set up from scratch to handle things correctly wouldn’t have had a snowball’s chance in hell.
I agree with both of you.
A ground up redesigned healthcare would almost certainly be much better.
But the two parties jobs (realistically) are to get elected, not solve problems. Democrats would try to put in to much freebie stuff regardless of complexity or economic non-viability, and Republicans would fight anything and everything to score points against them.
If both parties agreed to hand off healthcare design to Tim Cook and his operations crew we might actually get a great health ecosystem.
But congress loves to have newsworthy fights over stuff it has no expertise in, not hire independent non-political problem solvers who might actually design something that worked.
JCR: I can very easily point to military budget bloat as the one and only reason for astronomical budget busting. All one has to do is read about the lunatic and pervasive ‘Republican’ philosophy of ‘Starve The Beast’. Feed the military, drown everything else in a bathtub, or some such insanity.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast
From my POV it is the single most significant reason that it is Republican administrations that have racked up the most debt. The silly concept is that unfathomable debt will lead to cutting citizen services while leaving the military intact. You’ll also notice that this philosophy also blows the hell the myth that Republicans are dedicated to a balanced budget. Historically, that concept is ridiculous. The result of course is two parties maniacally blowing apart the budget for diametrically opposed reasons. I consider both parties to be out of their minds.
The defense budget is far, far less than amounts needed for Medicare, Social Security, and other entitlement programs.
As usual, it’s difficult to find a useful pie chart regarding the US federal budget specifically because they typically include Social Security as part of that budget, which is unrealistic. Social Security:
A) Raises its own tax funds.
B) Has been consistently raided to pay for aspects of the other federal budget concerns.
But I’ll post a US federal government generalized pie chart from 2010 as it’s at least useful to compare the other percentages (other than SS) for comparison. I’ll also add another post with the UK budget from the same period for comparison.
Here is how the UK has been recently spending their federal budget for comparison. I wish I could find a better pie chart, but it gives a general idea of the differences:
Wow, now I can see why English schools are so good. I lived in both England and New Zealand and have always been amazed at how highly educated the kids in either country are compared to here.
(Interestingly, I think our universities are generally better here, so its not all one way. And of course, the quality of individual schools vary widely in the U.S.)
The USA has THE world famous private universities. And there’s nothing stopping the community colleges from being incredibly useful places to learn. Meanwhile, the FREE courses available online, with or without completion certification, are INCREDIBLE! I’m in the midst of finishing up four free online classes (I’m just sitting in and learning) related to computer security. Two recently finished up at ITPro.tv. Another two are finishing up via Coursera.
However, our primary school through high school systems have been constantly under attack from budget cuts, the constant influx of what I call anti-students (kids who for various reasons refuse to learn and instead disrupt the education system), admittedly crappy teachers, an outrageously disrespectful attitude toward even the very best of teachers, dire governmental lack of comprehension of how the education system works and how it can be optimized. On and on, blahblah.
As a result, despite our good to best-in-class higher education system, we FAIL to provide acceptable basic education through high school in the vast majority of US school districts. That’s a fundamental act of self-destruction within the USA. Who needs terrorists? Seriously! The USA is busy wrecking itself directly at the foundation level.
Can you clue me in on the relevancy of how they spend their money in the UK?
I knew such questions would arise. It’s for personal comparison of budget spending between two first world countries. You decide the relevance. One question to ask one’s self is whether the USA can afford to be ‘The police of the world’. We certainly spend money on our military like we are. You can’t deny that.
I didn’t deny anything at all except for the relevancy of how the UK spends their money. I’m an American and I could not care less how they or anyone else spends their money.
Wow. Nothing outside of your own borders matters?
That’s of course up to you. I choose otherwise.
Bye bye P.A.
We will see. I hope that is true.
Certain powers-that-be have a huge incentive to keep the PA alive and unconstitutional. I’ll take the pulse of the ‘corpse’ after it’s been crushed by the anvil of time.
I was talking about this the other day. When one long standing rule falls. In time, all the others will fall too. I am referring to the Constitution. I recall a time when some wanted to change the rules to allow Arnold Schwarzenegger to run for President of these United States. Fortunately that did not go anywhere. But the sentiment is the same for all amendments. The test is, are the rules changing to make government/few more powerful, or the people more powerful? If it’s the government, then you should be concerned and worried. If it’s the people, then we are on the right path. As it is, the people are not being heard by their elected officials. 30% of the time, decisions made in Washington match public interest, which is the same as background noise. IE: As long as these interests matches their own. And the funny thing is, these people are from our own stock. How is it that they change, once elected? MONEY – Money talks. The 1% does have representation and the rest of us are in the way. Taxation without representation.
So some rules do have to change, and that has to do with campaign finance and lobbying.
Total agreement. I find there’s a blur of understanding the role of the ‘1%’ and the various corporate oligarchies in driving the USA into ruin. They end up being one in the same in most respects. So it’s interesting to read what you wrote in the context of my diatribe below about our corporatocracy.
Then this question: Is the drive toward what I call Neo-Feudalism, with the 1% / corporatocracy as our overlords, a product of our current culture? Is this all about how the new overlords were raised as kids? Is this people choosing to act psychopathically? If so, what drives them to literally act insane and anti-survivalist? Is this out of boredom? Are these people significantly lost because they have no foundational comprehension of nature? Of miracle planet Earth, our only home? The place we either sustain or we die?
It’s all lunatic to me. It goes against civilization. It goes against human survival. It’s all about GAME PLAYING and being so lost in one’s chosen game that either the world passes by unnoticed, or one becomes devoted to killing reality dead in a personal mandate to live with a game world.
No healthy, that’s the least I can say about it.
Also, I am so very grateful that I gained enough perspective to step outside of these games and enjoy what’s real here on Earth. I certainly chatter enough about the game playing, but my spirit is connected to the natural world. There’s an insight into how I think.
There is a reason the title “Game of Thrones” exist. Though life is serious, it’s a game to some. I like “Q” , from Star Trek, in that he represents the game carried to God like levels.
Good points!
Brilliant campaign strategy. How do you get to deliver a never-ending campaign speech? Why, filibuster, of course! A lineup to take over after Paul steps down must already be forming. Better shelve those plans to clean the Senate mikes until after 2016.
I’d like to see the TSA disbanded, but that will never happen now. Once these worthless entities are created they only grow bigger to create more votes for the Democratic Party, which is just another type of cancer afflicting the U.S.A.
Amen – AND “Homeland Security”. It wasn’t JUST the war in Iraq that Bush started that is sucking the money out of our country its this bloated REDUNDANT waste. We have an FBI and CIA, why do we need Homland Security and NSA cut liberty destroying spending and reinforce social security and medicare.
For what reason does the NSA collect and store this metadata?
Why in case we need to build a case against someone in the future you know someone who reads too much Huffington Post, or is a member of the Tea Party, or is a radical Global Warming “nut”. RIGHT and LEFT need to come together against this madness. Patriot Act and NSA data collecting is bad for EVERYONE.
Hey, as long as it keeps me from being blown up by a terrorist, I’m all for it!
A postal worker just got indicted for flying his gyrocopter into the middle of Washington and landing right by the Capitol. He had been public about doing it for more than a year. His plan was all over his social media site and he never made a secret that he planned to do it.
FBI, NSA, CIA–every so-called security agency–missed this completely. But they got your phone records.
It’s a good thing this was a misguided citizen and not a terrorist. Hundreds of lives could have been lost. So tell me, again. How did NSA snooping keep us safe?
Well well well citizens of the free and civilized world, there just might be some hope that one day this country will wake up and decided to stop these barbaric practices like the Pat Riot Act, immoral invasions of sovereign nations and unethical torture practices, but then again don’t hold your breath, after all this country has been at war for 80% of its history. I guess they were born without a moral compass. I guess that’s what you get when you let slave owner write your constitution, a great fluff hot air with hypocritical acts.
Further relevant great quotes:
“We The People – are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.” – Abraham Lincoln
“There is little value in ensuring the survival of our nation (United States of America) if our traditions do not survive with it. And there is very grave danger that an announced need for increased security will be seized upon by those anxious to expand it’s meaning to the very limits of official censorship and concealment. That I do not intend to permit, to the extent that it’s in my control.”
– Quote from JFK on April 27, 1961
Who cares! This has nothing to do with Mac news, even remotely.
ZinkDiff, MDN is a COMMUNITY. People TALK to each other here. If you can’t see any connections here, that’s okay. If you want ONLY Mac news, don’t read the comments. Or try another site. Who cares? Most of us do. And you? If you ran MDN, would you be shutting down the forums when someone posted off topic? You must be new here…
One thing Rand Paul (actual patriot!) pointed out is that (using my words) EVERY US citizen is now being treated as a default criminal. Therefore, everyone’s private data is being collected under suspicion that we are all criminals.
Note how this sick and unconstitutional attitude and behavior is EXACTLY that of our corporate oligarchy. We customers are default criminals and must be surveilled under suspicion that we are committing crimes against the corporations. This is EXACTLY the attitude of the RIAA and MPAA, to name the two large elements of the media oligarchy.
I’ll also list all the laws and treaties that AGAIN treat everyone as a default criminal who must be surveilled in the expectation that they are committing crimes:
CISPA – Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act
PIPA – Protect IP Act (US Senate version of SOPA)
SOPA – Stop Online Piracy Act
ACTA – Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement
TTP – Trans-Pacific Partnership trade treaty
TTIP – Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (aka TAFTA)
#MyStupidGovernment is so desperate to shove this unconstitutional bad attitude down US citizen’s throats that they have, as seen above, tried again and again and again to legislate into LAW.
#MyStupidGovernment is so desperate to make this unconstitutional bad attitude into GLOBAL/international law that they are at this moment attempting to pull another unconstitutional move called ‘Fast Track’. It removes the constitutional responsibility of the US Senate to provide ‘advise and consent’ over ALL treaties introduced to the congress. Once they’ve shoved ‘Fast Track’ into place, Obama can have the *secret* TTP and TTIP trade treaties brought to the Senate floor, with NO DEBATE POSSIBLE, for a simply up or down vote. NO consultation whatsoever. NO ability for We The People to read these treaties UNTIL they have been made law. Again: NO DEBATE POSSIBLE.
This is CORPORATOCRACY. If this continues, we are thoroughly FSCKed. We are the criminal citizens who must be surveilled, despite that being unconstitutional. This is real fascism. This is ‘1984’ made real. This is the limping and sick end of democracy.
Sorry to be the bummer messenger, but that’s what’s going on right now. 😛
Thus ends my manic chatter for today. Sorry to hog the page.
Can’t imagine a Republican would be opposes to the Patriot Act.