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Comment by eli | Hacker News Reader

A majority of House Democrats voted for it. That is a significant rebuke of the Obama administration.

Yes, the numbers were:

   Republicans: 94 yea, 134 nay (41% in favor)
   Democrats: 111 yea, 83 nay (57% in favor)

Not too surprising, since traditionally "strong on national security" is a core GOP position, and the party establishment tends to see civil-liberties challenges to national security policy as misguided. That might overrule any partisan instinct to vote against Obama.

is there a link of the individual votes? govtrack.us doesn't look to be that up to date

Yes, it was just posted: http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2013/roll412.xml

I had looked when I posted my comment so I could link it along with the numbers, but 25 mins ago it wasn't up yet.

Just talking out my butt here, but I think on most votes they have a pretty good idea of where most congresspeople plan to vote and whether or not the amendment will pass. So if some republicans knew it wouldn't pass with their yea vote, they could have felt comfortable giving it a yea as taking credit for standing up to "the administration." Whereas they may not have actually given that vote if they thought it mattered. This opinion is based on no other data than watching House of Cards on netflix and Veep on HBO.

This. The general public has no idea how much posturing is involved in such votes. These people will even trade votes: the Dem says "Please, I want to appear strong on defence, so I'll vote no, while you (the Republican) can vote yes".

Source: knew a couple of people who had worked as aides to congresscritters

I think this tweet is pretty spot on:

"Rotating Villains strike again: Just enough liberals inexplicably voted no on NSA restrictions to make it the way Obama wanted."

https://twitter.com/brmull/status/360192763502931968

You can read the read the tea leaves and see anything you want. It's unusual for so many Democrats to vote against a program being administered by a Democratic president.

Happens a lot: http://www.salon.com/2010/02/23/democrats_34/

Call me a pessimist, but those "strong on national security" might use this vote as a hammer against their opponents in future elections -- voted against securing this country against those terrorists...

Sad that this was my first thought.

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