Florida Senator Apparently Voted The Wrong Way Over USA Freedom Act [UPDATE: Or Not]
from the you-had-one-job dept
Update: And, of course just as this story came out, Nelson's office finally spoke on the issue after dodging requests from multiple reporters all morning. They told Kevin Collier that the vote was not a mistake, despite the rumors and questions (and the fact that he was the only Democrat to vote against cloture. The original post is below. According to Collier, Nelson's office says that he feared the bill would have "undone a provision allowing for retention of certain telephone records that he feels is helpful in preventing future terrorist attacks." That's a funny statement, of course, given that the program in question has yet to be shown to have prevented any terrorist attacks. Ah well...Oh, Florida. As we noted last night, the Senate failed to move the USA Freedom Act forward in a cloture vote. Sixty votes were needed to bring the bill to a real vote, and only 58 made it. Many people focused on the fact that "Republicans blocked the bill" while noting that the vote was mostly along party lines, with just four Republicans voting for it: Senators Mike Lee, Dean Heller, Lisa Murkowski and Ted Cruz. A lot of the focus was on Senator Rand Paul, who is vocally opposed to NSA spying, but voted against this bill, saying he didn't think it went far enough (nearly all of the other no votes were because they felt it went too far). Bizarrely, after voting no on cloture, Rand Paul now claims he's sad -- and that "they probably needed my vote." Uh, yeah.
However, few have mentioned that there was only one Democrat who went the other way and voted against cloture: Senator Bill Nelson of Florida. Now there are reports from Alvaro Bedoya (a recent Senate staffer) that Nelson actually meant to vote for cloture, but voted no "by mistake." I have a request in with his office to see if this is accurate, but haven't heard back yet [see the update above if you haven't read it already]. However, that's quite an incredible mistake if true. It's certainly not unheard of for elected officials to accidentally vote the wrong way, but on major issues like this, they're usually pretty careful. And, yes, if Nelson had voted for cloture it would have only brought the vote up to 59, but that just highlights how important Rand Paul's vote was in killing off this attempt at reform.
No matter what, can't we at least expect our Senators to vote the way they actually planned to vote?
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Filed Under: bill nelson, nsa, rand paul, surveillance, usa freedom act
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Re:
No. That never had any chance of moving and once our story came out, his office insisted they had no intention of pushing it (they claimed they never did, but our information was supported by very credible sources).
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Re: Re:
At least the Keystone vote went the right way, by a similarly narrow margin.
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Updated
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No.
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Broken Representatives, Broken Electorate
Of course not, which is why for the past few years public approval of Congress is generally low.
Unfortunately, it does not help explain why the incumbency rate is generally so high.
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Re: Broken Representatives, Broken Electorate
Ah, the ol' "I meant to do that" answer. I like to say that too when I screw up.
Nobody ever believes me though. I must lack the gravitas of a senator.
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Re: Broken Representatives, Broken Electorate
Thanks, Diebold!
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Senators CAN change their vote
I've definitely read stories about Senator Harry Reid changing his vote on things at the minute when it becomes clear it won't get 60 votes for cloture (because of obscure senate rules that the majority leader can't bring something up to vote again if it fails to clear a filibuster, unless the majority leader voted against it).
There's also a few videos apparently when the senate was voting on Obamacare, where Reid accidentally voted the wrong way, but then quickly changed his vote as other senators start to laugh at his mistake.
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Re: Senators CAN change their vote
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Re: Senators CAN change their vote
From what I've heard on this, it's true that *leadership* will do that, but it's almost unheard of for rank-and-file.
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Grow up.
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Re: Re: Re:
Case in point, today i sent the article about the Winter Haven School raid to six co-workers. Three came back saying they had no problem with the drill except for the fact that one of the hand guns were loaded.
This is what we're up against. And this is why it'll _never_fucking_change before it's too late.
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No, because Congress will extend 215 no matter what. And now it won't have any of the associated reforms.
So, no.
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So by playing the "What If..." game
If the Senate was mad up of 100% Democrats, it would have been around 98% Yay and passed, change.
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