The USA Freedom Act, originally the stronger of the two Senate NSA reform bills but watered-down to the point of irrelevance, has failed a procedural vote today, and will no longer be considered until January at the earliest.
The motion to bring the bill to a vote in the Senate needed 60 votes to pass, but got only 58, with 42 opponents. The opposition came from both sides, with surveillance critics saying the bill was too weak to bother with, and surveillance advocates who didn’t want any reform bill, even a token one.
This was reflected in both Kentucky Senators, Rand Paul (R – KY) and Mitch McConnell (R – KY) voting against bringing the bill to the floor for exactly opposite reasons.
The defeat means the bill is effectively dead until the new Senate takes office, and with a much more hawkish bend, it will likely be hard for any reforms to get past them. At the same time, they likely won’t be as supportive of the pretense of reform as the backers of this bill were.
This may be good news in the long run, as it will at least keep the question of mass NSA surveillance of American citizens in the public eye, and without any ability for the administration to claim a bill has nominally “resolved” the matter.
Good. For now, till they come up with an even more evil bill.
Since this Congress has proven beyond a doubt that they don't care what the "public eye" sees or says I don't expect any bill to come out of the new Congress. They will just ignore the "problem" and eventually the poodles in the media will stop talking about it and things will continue as they are. Congress really doesn't care if the American people are spied upon because this Congress believes it makes us a stronger nation. The next Congress is going to no different – maybe even more so.
One eventually reaches a point where you realize that the stone is in free fall down the side of the mountain and there is nothing except the glass house (American Experiment) at the bottom waiting for the cataclysm to play out.
Whether the state of affairs was designed to get us where we are or just an unfortunate result of time and the weight of decisions (or non-decisions (non-voters)) made by ignorant or lazy people, we are where we are and we've lost control. And I believe that short of a race of superior aliens from a galaxy far, far away stopping by and delivering an ultimatum to knock it off, there is nothing we will do – not that we couldn't – but we won't.
Ignorant and lazy voters certainly contributed, but the process didn't happen by accident. A few very rich and powerful individuals have paid a lot of money – much of it coming from US taxpayers – to get us to where we are. "In politics nothing happens 'by chance.' If something happens, then you can bet that it was planned that way." – Franklin Delano Roosevelt
FDR should know, he planned a few of those coincidences himself.