Three cheers for Rep. Justin Amash and colleagues who came within a whisker of reining in the NSA’s illegal surveillance tonight in Congress! (Final vote on his amendment was 217 to 205).
This is a huge moral victory – and the sign of civil liberty victories to come. And the floor debate helped reveal the cravenness of those members of Congress who champion government law-breaking.
A strange split of votes ( http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2013/roll412.xml ). The leadership on both sides of the aisle voted no and mustered enough votes to defeat the amendment, but apparently allowed a significant number of their caucus members to go on record as voting to rein in the abusive surveillance, perhaps with an eye to their upcoming election campaigns. Enough members sat on their hands to tie the vote.
Amusingly, the members’ votes on the amendment essentially meant either “Yes, I do not condone warrantless wiretapping” or “No, I DO.” It’s like the old song about “Yes, we have no bananas.”
The breakdown on the vote on both sides of the aisle was most encouraging.
Rep. Justin Amash perfectly framed the issue: “They will tell you that the government must violate the rights of the American people to protect us against those who hate our freedoms.”
“They” hate us for having them, and so it only makes sense to take them away, thus stopping the hatred!
And, had the critters passed the Amash Amendment…we could rest easy that the NSA would follow through and cease warrantless illegal peeking into our once-private lives…?
Seriously???
I seem to recall something called Total Information Awareness. Our CongressCritters advertised they’d voted to crash and burn the TIA program.
Instead, that program quietly appears to have continued on…as revealed by the courageous “criminal” Edward Snowden.
Our little experiment in Liberty-based governance seems to have unraveled and morphed into a Frankenstein monstrosity…awaiting an angry, armed, torch-bearing mob of rabble…
Okay, well, whether or not the law would be obeyed – that’s a different question.
But I hate to miss the opportunity for an uplifting blog headline.