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Rand Paul’s Patriot Act Filibuster Made Things Worse
Fellow Conservative,
In case you missed it yesterday, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) took to the Senate floor to filibuster Mitch McConnell’s plan to renew the PATRIOT Act.
The PATRIOT Act, as Sen. Paul said in his opening remarks, is the most un-Patriotic legislation to ever be signed into law and it must be repealed. Rand Paul commandeered the Senate for ten and a half hours yesterday, an incredible feat.
I watched the entire filibuster and loved every minute of it. But as much as I support what Rand Paul did, he may have actually done more harm than good. With Memorial Day fast approaching, Mitch McConnell is eager to finish up so he can go on vacation. Rand Paul’s filibuster took an entire day out of the calendar, meaning the RINOs are going to be working twice as fast to get their bills passed before the weekend. That means we have to up our game as well.
McConnell’s plan includes a clean reauthorization of the PATRIOT Act. All the terrible provisions within the law that violate Americans’ rights would be reauthorized until 2020.
No way! Demand that Congress respect the 4th Amendment and repeal the PATRIOT Act immediately!
The most horrendous parts of the Patriot Act are set to expire on June 1st of this year. These are three of those provisions.
Section 215: This part of the law is what grants the NSA the power to spy on Americans and collect cell phone and internet records. If this provision expires, the NSA loses the authority to spy on innocent Americans. This is the best chance we have of reining in the NSA!
Lone Wolf Provision: This is what allows law enforcement to bend the rules and violate the Constitution. Claiming that an individual is a “lone wolf terrorist” gives law enforcement unprecedented powers to surveil and apprehend individuals.
Roving Wiretap Provision: This part of the law is what is known as Section 206. Imagine if the FBI had the authority to, with a single search warrant, raid every house or business you have been to or associated with in the past year. Well, stop imagining because this is exactly what Section 206 does. It’s completely unconstitutional.
The Constitution requires that a specific warrant be given for law enforcement to gather intelligence related to an investigation.
There’s a reason that the Founders wrote this into the Bill of Rights. During the revolution, British soldiers issued what are called “general warrants.” Instead of targeting one individual, the British gave themselves the authority to search entire neighborhoods for contraband.
The Fourth Amendment was written to make sure that government officials were not allowed to issue broad warrants like this ever again.
Fast-forward 200+ years and we have the National Security Agency collecting every single Americans call/internet records and storing them in a database in case they are ever needed. Think about that. You aren’t under investigation, but the NSA is storing your phone records in case you ever are under investigation.
That is the opposite of how our system is supposed to run!
On top of this, even though the PATRIOT Act was intended to stop foreign terrorism, it is now being illegally used to aid domestic investigations!
If you talk to any of the sponsors or co-sponsors of the original bill, they will tell you that it has been grossly misinterpreted by both the Bush and Obama administrations. Congress never intended to give spy agencies like the NSA so much power over innocent Americans.
Yet, Congress is poised to vote on a clean reauthorization of the PATRIOT Act anyway, even though the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals just ruled that the NSA’s spy program is illegal.
You’re probably asking yourself, “what can I do?”
Well, you don’t have to give a speech for 10+ hours like Rand Paul did. All you need to do is let Congress know, in no uncertain terms, that a clean reauthorization of the PATRIOT Act is unacceptable. The only language these career politicians understand is the prospect of losing re-election and the only one who can deliver this message is YOU!
Sincerely,
Joe Otto
Conservative Daily
Source: http://conservative-daily.com/2015/05/21/rand-pauls-patriot-act-filibuster-made-things-worse/
