Pressure builds on Boehner for NSA vote

thehill.com

22 points·1337biz··5 comments

My guess: they will float a toothless bill that gives lip service to protecting civil liberties. Then they will gauge the reaction to that bill to find out how much the public at large actually understands about what's going on.

If the public is mollified by a toothless bill then we go back to business as usual, only they'll be even bolder because now the actions have been "sanctioned". If, on the other hand, the Internet is able to generate SOPA and CISPA-like levels of opposition saying that the bill is worthless, we might actually get something of value in Round 2.

I am not too familiar with the American legislative process. Why is it that only Boehner can put a bill for voting? It sounds like it would be an unnecessary obstacle.

Anyone can put forward a bill, that will then die in committee or never make it on the agenda for a vote, or fail to come to pass in a thousand other ways. I don't care enough to know the exact situation here, but it's very common that ranking law makers are able to exert control using procedural rules to determine which things can even be voted on, and which are not.

He's the Speaker of the House (i.e. the presiding officer.) He sets the schedule for votes, so he can kill a bill by failing to schedule it for one.

Talk about undue hierarchy. I stick to my view that Western democracy's primary value is that it slows change.

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