Rand Paul wants to lead a Supreme Court challenge to Feds' tracking of Americans | Hacker News Reader

Rand Paul wants to lead a Supreme Court challenge to Feds' tracking of Americans

foxnews.com

246 pointsjchavannes71 comments

What amazes me is the hypocrisy in all this. The American people have basically known about this since about 2006. It's just that there wasn't as much proof or specifics but the media covered this and it was pretty much common knowledge that all phone calls and Internet activity were being watched. Of course that's not okay and I still get the current outrage. Totally understandable.

But then there are the senators... These guys approved this activity long ago and while not all of them knew the specifics the Intelligence Committe did. They were taken into meetings where no note taking tools or anything with a battery was allowed and briefed about this.

Now that this story breaks the senate gets their panties in a twist like this is news to them. They simultaneously defend it and condemn it.

It isn't fair to make such a blanket statement about the entire Senate, I know but what I'm really getting at here is that what Rand Paul is doing doesn't strike me as sincere at all. It looks like a dog and pony show set up to make it look like someone gives a shit while they all keep getting briefed and voting for this stuff behind closed doors.

It's like set up a bunch of PR stunts to make us feel warm and funny then do the opposite while no one is paying attention. On this issue I feel like its the guys trying to get attention the most who can be trusted the least.

Hypocrisy? I'm not so sure.

It is really difficult to get a single person to change their mind about something. Even more difficult to get large groups to change their collective opinion.

Theoretical concerns about how a program might be abused are much less convincing to people than actual abuses. It isn't surprising to me that people who discounted the possiblity of abuse in the past might now think differently about it (politicians and public citizens alike) when presented with actual overreach or even abuse.

I don't think that is an example of hypocrisy though.

To be fair to Paul, this is his first term -- he's been in the Senate for a bit longer than 2 years now. So he certainly wasn't involved in decisions made "long ago".

That said, I generally disagree with many of his stances, and think you're probably right that a lot of what he does is fundamentally political.

I don't understand why people accuse politicians of using politics. Isn't that like accusing a farmer of plowing a field?

Politicians can't get elected admitting they're politicians.

Yeah. That's one of the most absurd things about America: we force our public officials to lie, and then complain about it when they do.

In what other field do people apply for work by claiming to be not only ignorant of, but hostile to the job they're applying for? Everyone is Mister Smith going to Washington now, it's manufactured cynicism, and Americans seem to eat it up.

I remember, to my shame, voting Schwarznegger into office precisely on this premise. I've grown up since, fortunately. I'm sad that no one called me on it when I explained my reasoning to people back then.

I wouldn't bother mentioning it if I didn't see people claiming otherwise.[1] :)

1. Not necessarily in this thread, but in general. (I live in KY.)

While this is undoubtedly true for some senators, Paul seems like quite a poor choice of target for this criticism.

He has been very vocal in opposition of governmental encroachment on civil liberties during his senate term. He was, in fact, the last senator left in opposition to the extension of the Patriot Act.

Not to mention that he was only elected in 2010, well after a lot of this stuff had been implemented and reauthorized time and time again.

But to be fair—regardless of the reasons behind it—Paul endorsed Romney for president, who promised to contribute to expanding our spy state like Obama and his High Command.

I find it hard to imagine his father agreeing to do such a thing for any price.

Rand Paul may have its faults. Many people like libertarianism but they don't like the pro-religion/prolife and pro-rich aspects that come with it. That's why Bill Maher has distanced himself recently from the libertarian appelation. However to say that it's not sincere coming from Rand Paul is not fair at all. If you know a little bit about who he is, who his father is, you couldn't say that... Of course Rand Paul is building a political portfolio for 2016. The filibuster, the TSA, the balanced budgets and now this, it's all going into it. But all these political actions are in line with who he is and what he represents. And still, after all that there's a very big chance he'll lose to a generic republican like Rubio or Ryan in the primaries.

Your speculation about the GOP primaries is mis-informed. In 2010, Rand was an insurgent "tea party" republican, as was Rubio -- both men were officially opposed by the party in their primaries and defeated the "generic" GOP candidate. In both the GOP and Democrat parties, generic candidates often struggle in primaries if there is a non-crazy candidate who can appeal to the base. Rand has a safe path back to the GOP nomination -- his biggest risk is doing too much "national" work and losing to an establishment Democrat in battleground Kentucky.

My reading of it is he was referring to the 2016 Presidential primary contest for the Republican Party, not to the Republican primary for the Senate race in Kentucky.

Pro-religion, pro-life and pro-rich? This is the kind of misinformation that gives it a bad name. Libertarianism is all about personal choice and "liberty" hence the name. The point is not to tell you whether or not you should be pro-life or pro-religion but to let you decide for yourself.

Libertarianism in general isn't particularly pro-religion or anti-abortion. (except in that it supports general 1A, but a lot of atheists are libertarians). I think the Paul family's anti-abortion stance is their own (and, it was always kind of understandable for Ron Paul, as an Ob/Gyn, to have a strong opinion one way or the other on the issue)

Sorry, but you have no idea what you're talking about. At all.

Rand Paul was one of the very few, along with Ron Wyden and Udall, to try and stop the FISA Amendments Act from being renewed last year. They voted against them (and for FISA renewal) 92-7.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIyLlXBcbjo

So HE HASN'T CHANGED HIS MIND ABOUT ANYTHING. This is how he was thinking all along. It's the others that supported the spying.

Whoa horsey. Slow down a bit. I'm as pissed as you are, but you're spreading too wide of a net.

Yes, Congress has oversight authority over all of this, but in practice what they've done is assign huge powers to agencies and then just hold PR committee meetings every now and then when they think they can get votes.

As far as I know, the only legislators fully briefed on all of this were the majority/minority leaders. Perhaps the chairmen of the intelligence committees. Perhaps not. Definitely not the entire committee, and definitely not every senator who can appear in front of a microphone.

The real problem here is that Congress has abdicated its power over to agencies ran by the president. This is true in many areas. If things screw up, they can have hearings and look like heroes. If things go well, they can either ignore them or make hay. In either case, nobody really cares what the agencies are doing. It's impossible. There simply too much detail for the legislature to manage. So the rule is: never do anything that will make you appear on TV. This is what the NSA violated.

I'd just be careful you don't throw the baby out with the bath water. Congress has the power, and could use it, to straighten this entire thing out. It's not just all PR stunts. Or how about putting it this way: yes, it's PR stunts, but with enough attention on these stunts, maybe the rest of them will grow the balls necessary to actually do their jobs.

This is a good sign. I hope we see many more "PR stunts" like it.

I don't know if the real problem is that Congress has abdicated its power. I think the real, real problem is that many of the sensible people in congress realize they have many colleagues who are either excessively partisan or incompetent. They realize that delegation to within the agencies or executive branch means the fewer of such folks with access to information that they might feel tempted to leak for personal or political gain or just because of raw stupidity.

If what you say is true...

These Congresspeople should be removed from office. They are obviously not doing their jobs. That's the one thing McCain said this morning that was correct. Congresspeople were informed... and are now feigning righteous indignation. He pointed out that there was only one vote against the Patriot Act... and that member is no longer in office.

Russ Feingold of Wisconsin was the lone voice for liberty in 2001 [1]. There were 10 votes against its renewal in 2006. There were 66 Nays in the House in 2001, including—famously—Dr. Paul.

[1] http://educate-yourself.org/cn/patriotact20012006senatevote....

Agreed, Rand Paul has had access to this information for years. He's just playing on people's emotions to get more support now that it's all public.

"Years".. as in just over two of them?

> The American people have basically known about this since about 2006

2006?

Try 1997

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnivore_(software) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON_system

... and anybody with any sense could guess they've been doing this for far longer. The NSA doesn't go around shouting it from the rooftops, but they've never tried particularly hard to hide that they're doing this sort of thing.

Note the copyright date on this file from the Emacs distribution:

http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/emacs.git/tree/lisp/play/sp...

The most surprising thing about the current episode is simply that everybody's acting so shocked. Seriously people?

Senators are not one person, which I suppose is why you're getting confused as to the contradiction. There are those like Obama who were for things like this, and those like Rand Paul who are against.

> It looks like a dog and pony show set up to make it look like someone gives a shit while they all keep getting briefed and voting for this stuff behind closed doors.

And also, this is yet another instance of where a politician has decided that only Americans have rights. At least mention a framework (reciprocity, normalized relations, something) under which surveillance of non-Americans would be allowed instead of making it a binary "You're either one of us or one of them!"

so what's the hypocrisy again?

What do you find preferable?

In scenario A, a group of senators learn of a widespread domestic surveillance program. They all think it's a good idea, or at least a good enough idea that there's no reason to protest, gum up the works, or raise an alarm. When the program is accidentally disclosed to the public, they all greet widespread popular outrage with the message "we've considered this, and we want to keep it going".

In scenario B, a group of senators learn of a widespread domestic surveillance program. They all think it's a good idea, or at least a good enough idea that there's no reason to protest, gum up the works, or raise an alarm. When the program is accidentally disclosed to the public, they all respond to widespread popular outrage by sounding even more outraged than the public. There is much senatorial roaring and gnashing of teeth. Investigations are opened. All this despite the fact that the senators don't really see what the big deal is.

The highest function of an American politician is to reflect the views of the public. When the facts change, their minds must not change; that would betray the base. But when public sentiment changes (if, for example, the public were to come into possession of information that was new to it), their minds change with it.

Since he's a member of the Senate, a more direct route than the judicial branch would be to pursue legislative-branch solutions, such as introducing a bill to amend the FISA statute in a more civil-liberties-friendly manner.

That wouldn't be in the spirit of empty grandstanding at all! You, sir, simply don't understand Ron Paul's strategy.

Rand, not Ron.

But, yes, I believe this is probably of a piece with his drone filibuster in terms of being political theatrics.

A supreme court case has benefits that legislation doesn't. If he can get a favorable decision for civil liberties, he could bind future congresses that may not be as friendly to civil liberties as he is. This also could be accomplished through a constitutional amendment, but a court case is far easier.

for starters, Rand is proposing some legislation. A supreme court case is always non-binding to congress. They can just re-propose the law, and wait for someone to sue again (e.g. child labor laws in the 20s). Or the executive can just say, damn you supreme court we're gonna anyways (Jackson, early 19th century). And while a constitutional amendment would be nice, the only part of the constitution that the US follows anymore is 'election protocol' and details that create the pomp and circumstance around inauguration.

A SCOTUS decision IS binding to Congress. They can't pass a law doing something that has been deemed unconstitutional unless they first amend the Constitution to explicitly allow them to do that same thing, which is obviously not going to happen.

Actually, Congress can pass any law they damn well please. It's not until the courts deal with it that an unconstitutional law (in the opinion of a court interpreting law and precedent) can be thrown out.

My original post was operating under the assumption that all branches would abide by the legitimate actions of the other branches. Grandparent is pointing out that sometimes this doesn't happen. Always a possibility, but not something I expect to see very often.

Technically, Congress can pass any bill they damn well please, but it's not a law if it contradicts the Constitution.

A SCOTUS decision is supposed to be binding to whatever act HAD been passed. Whether that happens in effect is entirely dependent on the (usually) executive branch complying with the SCOTUS ruling. Congress can, if it wanted, re-pass the law. Obviously, it would make a subsequent suit and overturning easier, but in reality, it can, and has happened in the past.

Oh, right. Congress can repass it, but provided the Executive branch respects the function and decision of the judiciary, the Supreme Court does have the final say over congressional acts that have been challenged.

Yeah, I should have been more clear about saying that a SCOTUS decision is non-binding to congress moving forward.

Nope, the Founders were ... supremely suspicious of the Federal court system they were creating (e.g. lifetime tenure is double edged blade) and explicitly allowed the Congress to override it. Wikipedia has this under the words of art jurisdiction stripping: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jurisdiction_stripping

There are two types of decisions made by SCOTUS. In the first type, they rule on Constitutional grounds, in which case it is binding to Congress. In other cases they simply rule on the interperatation of laws themselves; so if Congress changes said laws, the ruling becomes irrelevent. The law in question here is 'interesting' in the sense that it tells the court how to interpret the Constitution. If it ever gets brought up before SCOTUS, my guess would be they would deem the law unconstitutional on the grounds that Congress cannot tell them how to interpret the Constitution. Granted, they would need to find something in the Constitution (or precedent) that says this, but I suspect that would be relativly simple.

But Congress is filled with Democrats and RINOs, so that's a no-go.

Of course, the Court is filled with know-nothings (as in, they are anti-abstraction, so there is no such thing as a valid governing principle, such as a right), so it's all probably pretty pointless.

How is being pro national security and strong police/intelligence a "RINO" position? That's a very traditional Republican position, dating back at least to the early 1950s and cold-war conservatism, and hardening in the 1960s/70s with conservatives' worries about the Vietnam protests, hippies, Black Panthers, and other groups they felt needed to be suppressed. Most Republican-appointed Supreme Court justices have tended to be pro-military and pro-police-power along those lines— Rehnquist, Burger, and Alito being three of the harder-line examples.

Perhaps you're thinking of an alternate history where the Republicans were a primarily libertarian rather than a primarily conservative party?

The Tea Party faction of the GOP is a pretty vigorous libertarian movement-- Rand Paul is the most libertarian elected official of either party.

You must be thinking of a different "tea party faction" than the one I know. Because the one I know has been doing its damnedest to to elect "social conservatives" who support "traditional family values".

But yeah, they're pretty libertarian with respect to the liberties they like. Everything else can go.

That's my impression of the Tea Party in my area (southeast Texas) as well, although the conservatism goes beyond social issues like abortion or gay marriage, and into things more relevant to this discussion, too. On security issues they actually seem rather pro-police and pro-military rather than the opposite. There's a lot of support among local tea-party activists for ideas like having drones patrol the Texas-Mexico border, or even nutty stuff like having roving police ID checks to catch illegal immigrants (Arizona's Sheriff Joe Arpaio is something of a hero). There are some libertarian views as well, but mostly limited to guns and taxes. On security issues, nativist views seem to override suspicion of government.

I think he did that, too. But he's tried that route several times before, and the majority of the Senate voted against it. So he's probably not very optimistic about it.

He knows that a legislative branch approach will fail without making any waves what-so-ever. That's very obvious. Too many members of Congress are openly fascist in their beliefs when it comes to supporting the police state (eg Lindsey Graham and Dianne Feinstein).

The judicial branch approach is meant to spur action and interest on the part of citizens. It's meant to create waves. He's intentionally looking to bypass the legislative branch because the outcome there is already known.

My guess is that if he hadn't filibustered the drone program a few weeks ago, he would of used a filibuster here. Seems like he did the math, and two filibusters this close would make him look like an obstructionist.

Not blaming the man, political capital is not free.

What would he be filibustering? There is no proposed legislation to oppose afaik. What needs to happen is the opposite: someone needs to propose and try to push through new legislation curtailing FISA.

I was surprised by Rand Paul's proposed bill "To stop the [NSA] from spying on citizens of the United States":

http://www.paul.senate.gov/files/documents/EAS13699.pdf

The effective body is fairly direct: "The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution shall not be construed to allow any agency of the United States Government to search the phone records of Americans without a warrant based on probable cause."

What really surprised me was that it used the word "search", rather than, say, "collect". Given that we don't know what happened to the records gathered under Stellar Wind/RAGTIME, it's possible that the activity would still be legal under Paul's bill.

I'm curious whether this choice of wording was intentional or accidental.

My wife is a former lobbyist. The wording is always intentional.

What does that mean, "lead a Supreme Court challenge?"

From what I understand, they'd have to file lawsuit with a lower court and fight the long long road up to the SC docket.

It means he wants to be on TV/in the newspaper/etc.

SCOTUS can have "original jurisdiction"[1] over some cases depending on the matter under review. In this case, because the State (read: USG) is a party in the case, SCOTUS can be the court in which a case is first argued.

_____

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procedures_of_the_Supreme_Court...

Rand Paul needs a class in civics, looks like.

Or you need to read up about the concept of "original jurisdiction" with regards to the Supreme Court.

The interesting side story behind all of this, that HN isn't looking at at all, is the "bi-partisanship as usual" reaction from outside Washington.

A reason something might come of this? Ironically, it is because the Rush Limbaugh crowd look at it as a way to get Obama, et al, while liberals are equally aghast. Never mind that it was all spearheaded by a Republican administration.

Now, as for me, I vote Green & don't like any of 'em - but it's nice to see everyone looking like they might agree on something for once.

Do I need a warrant to get Obama's data for my data analysis project?

I heard my neighbor making bomb threats against the goverment (not me, my neighbor) although I am mad at my government..

Yeah this should happen, but no Rand Paul shouldn't be in front of it.

Politics makes strange bedfellows. I'm all for Rand Paul if he'll volunteer to ride this pony.

Why not? Like him or not, this is definitely in line with the libertarian position.

Because he'll make concessions and strategy choices which are not in line with what I want.

Rand Paul would probably do a lot more good by learning how to think rationally.

That's all you've got? You feel free to call a man irrational, but provide nothing to support that position. Dare I say that comes across as belligerent ad hominem.

From his Benghazi hearing testimony

"I'm glad that you're accepting responsibility. I think ultimately with your leaving that you accept the culpability for the worst tragedy since 9/11. And I really mean that. Had I been president and found you did not read the cables from Benghazi and from Ambassador Stevens, I would have relieved you of your post. I think it's inexcusable."

- his obsession with drastically cutting social programs at a time when so many Americans need them

- his obsession with balancing the budget when interest rates are so low and the so many things point to the problem being a lack of spending / almost nothing pointing to the deficit being a problem

- his backwards social views

I forget how easy mainstream American media goes on him. He makes some interesting points but overall he seems very much like a dogmatic and unimaginative libertarian conservative.

Your use of these as evidence of Paul's irrationality does not seem rational. Instead, they appear as a complaint that he doesn't share the same values as you; and by extension he must be irrational since your values obviously must be rationally chosen.

Actually no, except for my point on social views. A couple assumptions I made are:

1) He wants the American economy to improve

2) He wants to do what it best for Americans as a whole

They seem like reasonable assumptions, correct me if you seem any hole in them please.

I do not think he his actions and these assumed goals are linked in a rational way.

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