Even in our polarized and right vs. left
political paradigm, there is one thing both republicans and democrats can agree
on: The federal government should have vast snooping powers and conduct mass
surveillance on everyone. They simply disagree over who should be in charge of
abusing those excessive powers.
The impeachment circus did
one thing successfully. It took attention from the government’s mass
surveillance programs that are constantly expanded. As Reason proposed: If
Democrats really feared Donald Trump’s exercise of the powers of the
presidency, why would they propose extending the surveillance powers of the
controversial Patriot Act?
House Democrats have
successfully slipped an unqualified renewal of the draconian PATRIOT Act into
an emergency funding bill – voting near-unanimously for sweeping surveillance
carte blanche that was the basis for the notorious NSA program.
Buried on the next-to-last page of the Continuing Appropriations Act, meant to keep the government’s lights on and dated yesterday, is the following language:Against the Left: A Ro...Llewellyn H Rockwell JrBuy New $8.00(as of 12:15 EST - Details)
Buried on the next-to-last page of the Continuing Appropriations Act, meant to keep the government’s lights on and dated yesterday, is the following language:Against the Left: A Ro...Llewellyn H Rockwell JrBuy New $8.00(as of 12:15 EST - Details)
Section 102(b)(1)
of the USA PATRIOT Improvement and
Reauthorization Act of 2005 (50 U.S.C.
101805 note) is amended by striking
“December 15, 2019” and inserting “March 15, 2020”.
This
relatively innocuous language pushes back the sunset provision of the Patriot
Act by three months, leaving its vast powers in the hands of a president who
Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden charges with
“failure to uphold basic democratic principles,” who House Speaker Nancy Pelosi
has accused of
“alarming connections and conduct with Russia” and, joined by Senate Democratic
Leader Charles Schumer, says is making an attempt to “shred the Constitution.”
–Reason
If
democrats honestly believed that Trump was all of the things he’s being accused
of, why trust him with the Patriot Act?
The American Civil Liberties
Union agrees, calling the Patriot
Act “an overnight revision of the nation’s surveillance laws that
vastly expanded the government’s authority to spy on its own citizens, while
simultaneously reducing checks and balances on those powers like judicial
oversight, public accountability, and the ability to challenge government
searches in court.”
Attempts
to roll back the spying powers of the government have all failed. This power is
only expanding and it’s going to get harder for people to protect themselves
against the government when they abuse this power. The last time (in 2018)
libertarian-leaning Republicans and a handful of Democrats wanted to strip the
government of some of its mass surveillance power, it failed.
“It became quickly apparent
that leading Democrats intended to side with Trump and against those within
their own party who favored imposing safeguards on the Trump administration’s
ability to engage in domestic surveillance,” The Intercept‘s Glenn Greenwald wrote at the time. “The most bizarre aspect of this spectacle was that the Democrats
who most aggressively defended Trump’s version of the surveillance bill—the
Democrats most eager to preserve Trump’s spying powers as virtually
limitless—were the very same Democratic House members who have become media
stars this year by flamboyantly denouncing Trump as a treasonous, lawless
despot in front of every television camera they could find.”
Reprinted with permission
from SHTFplan.com.
Mac
Slavo [send him
mail] is a small business owner and independent investor.
Copyright
© 2019 SHTFplan.com
