Congress Should Support Amash Amendment Just Because White House Statement Is So Insulting
from the don't-take-that-kind-of-crap dept
Last night, we wrote about the pure insanity of the White House's statement against the Amash Amendment, which would pull funding from the NSA for just the "dragnet" surveillance efforts, in which it collects all metadata on all phone calls. Considering that the very author of the Patriot Act insists the law was never meant to allow this kind of collection, Amash's amendment shouldn't be all that controversial. It's literally him bringing the actual law back in line with what many in Congress thought the law already was. For the Obama White House to hit back by claiming that this clear fix to the law "is not the product of an informed, open, or deliberative process" is downright ridiculous and insulting, considering that the decision to reinterpret the law in secret was hardly the product of an "informed, open or deliberative process."In fact, as Marcy Wheeler points out, this statement is so insulting to Congress, that Congress should vote for the Amash amendment as a response to the White House's claim. As she notes, this seems to be the White House blaming Congress for not being "informed, open or deliberative" in responsing to the administration's own efforts to mislead Congress by keeping them not fully informed, with a secret process, that guaranteed many were kept in the dark. To then flip that around and blame Congress as if it was Congress who wasn't being open is downright insulting:
Hell, if I were a self-respecting member of Congress, I’d support Amash-Conyers even if I weren’t already predisposed to, if only because this is such a crazy bat-shit claim to reason and openness.Of course, Wheeler makes another good point in that same post. The fact that the White House put this statement out, even after the NSA did a full court emergency lobby extravaganza to convince Congress not to support the amendment, at least suggests that the White House is realizing that there might really be enough votes to get this amendment through.
The Executive Branch has had 7 years to have an open debate. It chose not to have that open debate. Now that one has been brought to it by Congress, it pretends Congress is the one at fault for the lack of informed or open process.
President Obama claimed he "welcomed this debate." He might want to speed up that process, because it's happening and all he's doing is stalling and blaming others. But the debate is happening without him, and he might not like where it ends up.
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Filed Under: amendment, appropriations, debate, justin amash, nsa, nsa surveillance, patriot act, section 215, white house
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It probably doesn't matter
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.
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Re: It probably doesn't matter
A veto from Obama would do far more harm than good. It would be the definition of "cutting off your nose to spite your face"
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Anyway, just that they get to vote on this, will bring a lot of unwanted attention to those who really want the extra abilities for NSA. The fierce opposition by about half the population actually wanting to restrict the surveillance could make them vote in spite on anyone with a chance of winning against the incumbent.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: It probably doesn't matter
That never happens really. What happens is "continuing resolutions" where the past year's budget lines are approved for some limited amount of time (in FY12, there was never a budget but rather 3 or 4 CR's that just ran the course of the year).
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Re: Re: It probably doesn't matter
Sorry to burst the buble here, but the President has line-item veto power. Aka, he can strip any section of a bill he doesn't like without vetoing the whole thing. Note the "usually a budget appropriations bill" part of the intial description...
Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line-item_veto_in_the_United_States
Note: the more I think about it, the more I think he'd still have to strike the whole section which likely would keep funding from going to the NSA as you have said. Depends on Congress worded it, but when it's Congress vs the President, they're smart enough to figure out how to give stuff the best chance to succeed...
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No, they should not. Not for that reason anyway.
When discussing things of this importance, the last thing you want to do is to let your emotions cloud your judgement. You need to focus on facts.
I'm not saying if the Amash Amendment is a good thing or not, as I am not qualified to do that (I'm not even American). I'm just saying that you should take a rational approach, not an emotional one.
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"Congress Should Support Amash Amendment Just Because White House Statement Is So Insulting"
No, they should not. Not for that reason anyway.
You do have a point, but at some point you do need to remind the Executive Branch that you're the checks (literally) and balances. If you let the Executive Branch just walk all over you and treat you like crap, then you won't ever be anything more than that.
At the very least (if it were me in Congrees) I'm at the very least cutting the funding (even if it's only 10%) after the White House's comments. If the White House wants the money back, they can come begging for the opportunity to negotiate for it.
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That said.
Be careful how you choose fight bullies. If a bully just told you "DO NOT jump off that cliff" and you do, just to show him who's boss, you aren't gaining anything from the experience other than a few broken bones.
Again, I'm not saying that this is the case. This is just a weirdly contrived example where acting reflexively can get you hurt, even if you are acting with the best of intentions.
And don't forget that it was acting on emotions that got you into this mess to begin with.
All I'm saying is that you should act rationally, and ignore the douchebags. I trust that in America there are mechanisms in place to deal with boneheads that overstep their bounds? Why not deploy those mechanisms instead of acting like children?
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There used to be...now the "mechanisms" have to apply for asylum in Russia.
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Congress is a representative body. It should never find anything insulting.
It is the citizens of the United States that should find this insulting and removal of the people that have been making this happen should be the focus.
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Obama's idea of an open debate is to load the audience with his supporters for what ever issue it is, give a speech, and then call that debate with a good chance that questions won't be allowed.
This is the same thing that has happened with the White House Press Corps. If one of them writes an article that is published and makes the administration look bad, the staff will call the reporter the next day to cuss them out. If it is serious enough they will remove the reporters press credentials for access to the White House which has happened several times already. If reporters and the news can't question acts, then it doesn't come to the public's attention there is even a problem.
You see this same attitude now on display with this article.
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Obama should oppose
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Hmmmmm
And this would be different than the first 7 years how?
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In the NSA's defense
While it's good to be up in arms about the NSA's alleged (and statistically likely) monitoring of Americans (as well as the rest of the world, but especially Americans), before we get too worked up about things and completely tear off the lid, we need to realize that the NSA is a spy agency. Secrecy and surveillance are their bread and butter.
If we were to completely reveal all the NSA's secrets, the US would be put at a severe disadvantage, or a "spy gap", in comparison to the rest of the world.
So while I'd love to have a some more oversight for that behemoth of an agency (no secret courts with secret rulings and secret interpretations of the law thank you very much), I'd rather if we didn't force the NSA to show all of its hand to everyone at the espionage poker table, spy and terrorist alike.
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Re: In the NSA's defense
If you read the original dockets for the Patriot Act, you will notice that only foreign people's visiting this nation temporarily on visa or green card that have a criminal record to warrant monitoring or that have had warnings issued about them from their own nations would be spied on.
In 2008, when PRISM was started, a large number of congressmen got replaced and as a result, the house and senate switched from DNC to GOP majority. The GOP was in majority as Obama got elected, but when the PRISM program was written up, the DNC was majority House and Senate.
So to the untrained politically bias thought process of this current Administration , it looks like the Bush administration started this mess when the reality of the situation was actually started by their own willingness to lie to the entire world.
There is no excuse for Obama to bash his political opponents by saying "You Started This!" in his campaign and then turn around to not support a bill designed to tone it down...oh and to UNPROFESSIONALLY respond by spreading FUD.
Pro tip for next election season...vote for the most dull and boring person possible....it's the sign as a free thinker.
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Re: Re: In the NSA's defense
As for the size of the data collection, a lot it has to do with overlapping data (as I understand it at least). Ideally, the NSA doesn't put people under surveillance just based on one hit on a jihadist website. Ideally, they'll look for patterns, such as repeated hits to jihadist websites a, b, c, and d, as well as calls to traditionally unstable countries in order to factor in their decision.
Emphasis on ideally here. This is the same organization that says they can't even detect their own emails, and doesn't have the decency to waste the ink redacting everything like the DOJ does when they're the biggest data collectors on the planet.
Doesn't help that they shot themselves in the foot with a drone strike right out of the gate after the leaks started coming out with the 51% 'foreigness' remark.
It seems like the NSA has a worse PR/Damage Control team than Microsoft.
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Time to call it what it is and deal with it
To re-purpose former CIA anti-terrorism director Cofer Black's now infamous words about 9/11:
All you need to know is that there was a before PRISM and there was an after PRISM. After PRISM, the gloves come off.
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