Rep. Justin Amash’s (R – MI) amendment to the 2014 defense bill faced harsh opposition from President Obama and from most of the House leadership. The amendment would have required the NSA to stop its phone surveillance against American citizens and restrict it only to specific numbers related to actual, real terrorists.
Unfortunately the bill was defeated, but the 205-217 vote is encouraging, and reflects rising public outrage against surveillance overreach and the success of a drive to convince Congressmen that opposing the NSA may not be what the party leadership wants, but it is very much what the American people demands.
Public opinion always takes a long time to trickle into the halls of Congress and even longer to find its ways into the Senate. That Amash’s amendment was so close to passing, and even saw a majority (111-83) of Democrats defying the president is a very encouraging sign.
It also underscores the debt of gratitude the American people owe whistleblower Edward Snowden, for without his actions such a vote could never have taken place at all, and we would remain blissfully in the dark about what is going on.
A defeat for privacy today, but the fight carries on.
"opposing the NSA may not be what the party leadership wants, but it is very much what the American people demands"
interesting, because:
rep·re·sent
/ˌrepriˈzent/
Synonyms
depict – show – portray – present – describe – picture
To represent is to take an idea from one location, go somewhere else, and re-present it. It is not supposed to change in transit. If "representatives" are not re-presenting, depicting, showing, etc., what the people want, they aren't representatives and should be named something else like, say, dictators. "Dictators today voted down a bill popularly supported by the people from their districts."
The idea of having a few people speaking for hundreds of millions of people is absurd. It was devised when people could not communicate over distances so they had to send one or two guys on horses to Washington.
And of course this is not a revelation. Congress approval rating is around 13%. It is well known that US policy has a positive correlation with the desires of the top tier of society, zero correlation with the middle, and negative correlation with the bottom.
These people only "represent" on rare occasions, and it is coincidental, not intentional.
Well vote them out if you do not like it. There we are few who did not vote that also need to be voted out. http://politics.nytimes.com/congress/votes/113/ho…. Find out how your representative voted.
This vote was a litmus test. The yeses are the ones who will keep pushing for the ultimate security state and perpetual war.