As we continue the saga, from what was, to be honest, Edward Snowden to Rand Paul’s filibuster, we as Americans have reached a point where even Congress has said “enough is enough” and decisions have to be made–and not put off for a week so to enjoy their Memorial Day cookouts. The House passed, bipartisanly, the USA Freedom Act, which would take the collection of metadata away from the government and give it to the telecommunications companies. It would require warrants issued by judges for the government to retrieve this information. While still allowing bulk data collection, it’s not all in the hands of the government and there is some judicial oversight. An improvement that Rand might #Stand for, if it hadn’t failed by 3 votes.
Mitch McConnell, (R, KY) had been trying to force a clean re-authorization of the Patriot Act. But as we know from recent times, that isn’t going to happen. He was scrambling trying to reauthorize the Patriot Act for two months (fail), eight days (fail), five days (fail), and then two days (that failed as well). Paul, especially, is using procedure to either force a vote or force the Patriot Act to lapse.
The Senate will reconvene on May 31st, the day before the Patriot Act is set to expire, do I see a filibuster–without quotation marks–in Paul’s future?
