Skip to main content

The Man of the Hour

By



A lot of the indignation directed against Rand Paul for undermining the Patriot Act is because he shifted the Republican narrative on Foreign Policy away from ISIS, which GOP candidates had been busy laying at Obama's feet the past few weeks, calling in old faces like Paul Bremer to ridiculously claim that under the Bush administration they had such militant groups in check.  The Republicans would like us to believe that the Patriot Act was a big part of this success, thanks to PRISM and other government surveillance networks that could pry into virtually every aspect of our on-line profiles.

Rand has called the Patriot Act into question.  It wasn't pretty.  He used procedural methods to stall the renewal past its deadline, thereby allowing several provisions to expire, notably Section 215, which gives the government virtually unlimited surveillance powers.  This outraged the Republican old guard, who apparently thought Rand was just interested in making a political statement.   Turns out Rand did his homework and knew exactly what he was he doing, much to the dismay of Mitch McConnell, who is trying mightily to show he has control of the Senate Republicans.  Now, the Senate is forced to consider the House version of the Patriot Act provisions, which limits some of these surveillance powers.

Many persons still think Rand is all show and no substance, but he has been citing the nasty provisions in the Patriot Act for quite sometime.  There are others who have lashed out as well, notably Bernie Sanders, who has made it an issue on the campaign trail, but Rand took it a step further in finding a way to slow down its seemingly automatic renewal every four years.

We have been led to believe that the Patriot Act is integral to "obstructing terrorism," as it allows the government to trace the complex terror networks that use the Internet to organize and fund their insidious acts.  It's not like the government could do this without the Patriot Act, but the act gives it legal cover.  

Democrats have long been split on the Patriot Act, but the Republicans have until now been unified in their unquestioning support.  Rand has exposed a fissure in their ranks at a time Republicans desperately want to convey the image of a united front.  Rand came into office in 2010.  He was against its renewal in 2011, but was unable to mount much of a challenge.  This time around he was fully prepared.

We are finally having the long overdue debate that should have been the case four years ago, when it first came up for renewal under the Obama administration.  The President often talked of reforms, but few have been forthcoming.  He claims to have exercised benevolent executive judgement in regard to the most intrusive aspects of the Act, but in 2011, stamped its renewal without any real questions asked.  This is what apparently prompted Eric Snowden to go rogue.  In his mind, we had become far too complacent in regard to government eavesdropping.

Of course we know that the Internet is not a safe place, and our personal information is being bought and sold by on-line providers as we speak, but we would still like to think that it is not being stored somewhere to be used against us if some matter comes up where our allegiance is called into question.  This takes us back to the days of J. Edgar Hoover and all the files he kept on what he believed to be every subversive and radical group in the country.

Many Congresspersons, Republican and Democrat alike, still believe we need this kind of surveillance to keep America safe.  Yet, they will claim on the campaign trail that they value American freedom above all else, except God of course.  For Rand, this is blatantly hypocritical, as you can't have a free society, if the government can collect whatever information it wants on individuals for whatever reason it sees fit.

It is nice to see Rand Paul openly challenge not only his own party, but Congress and the President as well.  Finally, we have a real issue in this presidential campaign.  It is funny to hear guys like Bobby Jindal castigating Rand Paul, when he  has nothing to lose in this regard.  It is someone like Lindsey Graham, who finds his brazen image under attack as he has been a long supporter of the Patriot Act, back to its original ratification in 2001.  Hillary likewise has a lot to lose, as she was there as well when the Patriot Act was signed into law, offering little protest.  When you hear Jindal speak, it just shows how the Patriot Act has become part of political groupspeak, accepting it without reservations, just because it is believed the Patriot Act keeps us safe.  Orwell would roll over in his grave.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

By
  Welcome to this month's reading group selection.  David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908.  At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades.  Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society.  I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran.  Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, not...
230 comments
Read more

Team of Rivals Reading Group

By
''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005
293 comments
Read more

The Searchers

By
You are invited to join us in a discussion of  The Searchers , a new book on John Ford's boldest Western, which cast John Wayne against type as the vengeful Ethan Edwards who spends eight years tracking down a notorious Comanche warrior, who had killed his cousins and abducted a 9 year old girl.  The film has had its fair share of detractors as well as fans over the years, but is consistently ranked in most critics'  Top Ten Greatest Films . Glenn Frankel examines the origins of the story as well as the film itself, breaking his book down into four parts.  The first two parts deal with Cynthia Ann Parker and her son Quanah, perhaps the most famous of the 19th century abduction stories.  The short third part focuses on the author of the novel, Alan Le May, and how he came to write The Searchers. The final part is about Pappy and the Duke and the making of the film. Frankel noted that Le May researched 60+ abduction stories, fusing them together into a nar...
123 comments
Read more