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Comment by Hario | Hacker News Reader

Nice of the article to clearly lay out the partisan divisions here. None of that "blame both sides" bs.

The vote: All D's voted right except Bill Nelson of Florida. All R's voted wrong except Cruz, Lee, Heller, Paul, and Murkowski.

Where "right" means "for the overhaul bill" and "wrong" means the opposite.

You'll also notice that this bill got way over 50 votes, but still failed due to the modern filibuster.

View on HN

> All R's voted wrong except Cruz, Lee, Heller, Paul, and Murkowski.

The roll-call vote I'm looking at [1] only has Cruz, Lee, Heller, and Murkowski voting to move the bill to a vote on passage; Paul supported the filibuster.

[1] http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_c...

Paul ended his support because the bill also renews the Patriot ACT until 2017.

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

http://www.paul.senate.gov/?p=press_release&id=1244

He's actually been very consistent in opposing Patriot ACT renewals, and I applaud him for it.

So some Patriot Act provisions expire in 2015. That could make for some interesting politicking.

Not sure how one can be pro mass surveillance and anti-patriot act at the same time. Fuck that guy.

Because Paul isn't pro mass surveillance.

What is his justification for voting against? Unless his argument was that the bill is inadequate, I can't really see a good reason.

Do you bother reading previous answers before you comment ? He is opposing it because it renews the Patriot Act, which is a higher order Evil compared to the NSA-related measures.

> “In the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Americans were eager to catch and punish the terrorists who attacked us. I, like most Americans, demanded justice. But one common misconception is that the Patriot Act applies only to foreigners—when in reality, the Patriot Act was instituted precisely to widen the surveillance laws to include U.S. citizens,” Sen. Paul said, “As Benjamin Franklin put it, ‘those who trade their liberty for security may wind up with neither.’ Today’s vote to oppose further consideration of the Patriot Act extension proves that we are one step closer to restoring civil liberties in America.”

> Do you bother reading

Please don't make political arguments into personal quarrels on HN, even when someone doesn't bother reading. Political arguments are abrasive to begin with. Let's not add gratuitous abrasiveness.

This comment would be quite a good one without the first sentence.

Is it really gratuitous? Don't we want to show that some behaviors (like not reading the content) aren't welcome? Spelling that out rather than the mystery of a downvote is useful.

What's gratuitous is using the occasion to get in a personal dig.

> Please don't make political arguments into personal quarrels on HN

I am not making any kind of political statement nor a personal quarrel, I am simply pointing out that he got the answer previously but jumped on the comment trigger before reading anything linked. Is saying "Do you bother reading" considered offensive now?

Did you even read the article?

> Some of its opponents, like Senator Saxby Chambliss, Republican of Georgia, believe it went too far in curbing the N.S.A. Others, like Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, thought it did not go far enough.

This bill was completely watered down and subverted from the original, to the point where even many of its initial champions turned against it. Voting it down was the right choice. The worst thing would have been to have passed it and pretended that "reform" had been made.

I think one of my favorite sayings applies:

'The Perfect' is the enemy of 'The Good'.

Google, MSFT, Apple, the EFF all supported this bill. Obviously there are further improvements that could be made, but instead of starting from a better platform, we're at ground zero with an incoming congress that has no interest in curbing the 'military' power of the US.

The EFF's case for supporting the bill that was just killed is very clear about this:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/08/understanding-new-usa-...

While you are correct that there's no such thing as perfection, this bill is so far from the changes that are needed that its arguably not worth passing. When you pass a watered-down bill, that buys a decade or more for the opposing side. When it gets voted through, all of a sudden they imagine themselves as champions of compromise and at the same time delude themselves into thinking that they gave their opposition a gift. If an inadequate bill passes, that's likely all we are going to get for the next 10-20 years.

Its a shitty situation no matter what.

This is (arguably) a lame excuse.

Half-measures are often incoherent and worse

than the status quo.

See: banking & healthcare

You just lock yourself into a disaster.

Obama can update the EO's for the NSA without congress[+].

[+] EFF: "Future reform must include significant changes to ... Executive Order 12333, and to the broken classification system that the executive branch counts on to hide unconstitutional surveillance from the public."

He just doesn't want to stick his neck out.

So this bill was a distant 3rd choice for the country.

1) pass a good law

2) administrate the NSA into compliance

3) pass muddled legislation in a lame duck session

Yet the EFF still supported it.. and given your false choices, why not do both #2 and #3?

False choices what?

Your comment is absurd.

Fixing the EOs is simple.

(That buys time. Time to get

coherent legislation

figured out.)

That was the one from the spring. This was a new version that people supported.

Maybe. But by passing anything that politicians (and virtually no one else) currently cry 'terrorism' over, we'll get a chance to see that the sky did not fall after all, and an incrementally better bill could be plausibly considered with incrementally more reasonable debate.

The next two years are going to be full of "wrong" votes.

Probably, but some of the new R's in the Senate would follow Paul / Cruz on this vote.

Neither Rand Paul nor Ted Cruz were going to break with the party on the eve of the GOP's assumption of the senate majority, knowing that in a year or so they're going to be on a stage debating other Republicans in front of the GOP base.

In fact: the more "grassroots-friendly" this bill had been, the less tenable a yea vote would have been, particularly for Paul.

Paul said it didn't go far enough and had some problems. Cruz has proven he doesn't care what the old guard think.

Cruz did break with the party.

D'oh. Thanks for the correction.

Because, like Paul, he has the luxury to. If he ever held the tie-breaking vote he sure as hell would vote lockstep with the GOP. These people are "show libertarians," at best.

What would convince you of that fact, or convince you of the contrary?

Nope. Paul refused to support the bill because of the provisions for the continuance of the Patriot Act into 2017. He's been quite consistent on this, and it really doesn't have anything to do with Senate majorities. I applaud his stand.

Which ones?

I apologize, I haven't found my issue list but:

The following Republican Senators Elect are currently US House Reps and voted:

  Yea    Tom Cotton
  Nay    Cory Gardner
  Yea    Bill Cassidy (assuming win in run off)
  Nay    Steve Daines
  Yea    Shelley Wellons Moore Capito

Joni Ernst, Thom Tillis, Mike Rounds are the unknowns.

The new R's are going to do what they're told, just like Paul and Cruz did what they were told in this vote, as well: as stars of the Republican party, they were allowed to vote for cloture and deflect attacks on them in a year when the race for President heats up. And, they were allowed to do this because the leadership knew they already had the votes to block the bill.

The party of keep-the-government-out-of-my-healthcare would very much like to keep it in absolutely everything else you do.

These are not your Goldwater Republicans.

I'm not sure why you think I'm suggesting they are? My only point is that, had the blocking of the bill depended on Paul and Cruz voting against cloture, they would have voted against cloture. Since it didn't, they were allowed to vote for cloture, and appear to be friendly to privacy/whatever, since both of them think they might be President someday.

It's why a lot of votes in both houses can seem close, or bipartisan, but in fact they are not - just Congressmen who are owed a favor being allowed to vote in such a way that won't piss off their constituents or hurt their chances of being elected to a higher office someday, or land them a sweet consulting gig after they leave office, or whatever. If the leadership knows they have votes to spare anyway. This is a pretty common and well-known practice I thought, so I don't really understand the downvotes.

I mean, if both Cruz and Paul had voted for cloture and the Senate had moved on cloture with e.g. 61 votes or something (i.e. both their votes actually mattered and were against the party interests), then their votes would be big news and evidence of an actual schism. As it stands, how they voted doesn't mean shit, other than that they are reasonably famous politicians.

Two? You're awfully optimistic.

I doubt most votes are motivated by what's "right" and "wrong" (since we're apparently pretending those are objective for the moment). I suspect most are motivated by the party lines, for members of both parties.

You make a statement of non-partisan truth, and you're downvoted.

Well, there's your problem in a nutshell. That's why we are where we are.

Hooray Dean Heller - way to not-be-a-dick!

I find it interesting that Barbara Boxer voted for it, given her staunch defense of the NSA's abuses-to-date.

What a uselessly unintellectual commentary. Care to address the renewal of the 'Patriot Act' as being the "right" vote?

> What a uselessly unintellectual commentary.

No personal insults on Hacker News, please, even when someone else's comment seems dumb.

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