Freedom Act Passes: What We Celebrate, What We Mourn, and Where We Go from Here
eff.org
eff.org
Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) & Bernie Sanders (I-VT).
[1] http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_c...
[2] http://www.baldwin.senate.gov/press-releases/us-senator-tamm... & http://www.markey.senate.gov/news/press-releases/to-protect-...
I realize that unhinged rhetoric is part of the toxic political culture in the US, and almost all US politicians are guilty of similar bizarre polemic, but from what I've seen, Bernie Sanders actually seems to be a rare exception to this. Might he actually be an honest politician? It's hard to believe one really exists, but he gives me hope.
[0] http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/06/02/411534447/...
I thought I heard earlier this week that Sanders voted to block Rand's motion to halt hearing on the bill (so it would expire). Now he voted against it?
Those are advertising and only serve to confuse discussion of the actual content ("you are opposed to the Patriot act? Aren't you a patriot?" etc.).
Using neutral bill names, e.g., HR 625 or SB 1780 would be an upgrade from what we have now.
Even if a bill is given letter-letter-#### names, it'll get labeled and spun.
In theory, but the names catch on because they're easy to remember and use in conversation. People responded to Heartbleed because it was catchy and easy to remember. CVE-2014-0160 was not.
Asking people to remember what SB1780 is and whether they support it is about as likely to happen as them remembering the CNAME or A record corresponding to a DNS request[0].
Even if we forbade these names from bills, the media would invent them. "Obamacare" was not even the real name for the Affordable Care Act, and was originally a pejorative term, but the media started using it because it was much more distinctive and evocative. It became so widely used that it's now lost much of it's pejorative connotation (you'll even hear Democrats referring to it non-pejoratively).
[0] Remember that the same bill has multiple such numbers (one each for the House and Senate, plus a new one if it's reintroduced in subsequent years, etc., which is not uncommon for many pieces of legislation).
The Patriot Act has similarly transformed into a negative, doublespeak term. I'm not surprised the lawmakers felt the need to create a new bumpersticker-named law rather than continuing to edit the old one.
you could call the next bill involving abortion "CVE-2014-0160" and I guarantee you people would know it. You'd most likely just hear "bill 0160" or the like, but the point is that it's the contents that make remember the bill, not the name. The name is marketing.
What about the next 50 controversial bills?
Would you remember which one is CVE20140160 and which one is CVE20150240?
It gets hard once there's 4 of them. If you have to deal with 10 of them at once, it's impossible to remember which is which unless you work in the field, at which point you're not the one phased by names like "patriot act", "freedom act" or "isn't it cool to hate on the french act".
Maybe if I say 09f91102 you'll know what that is. But I doubt you know what e83c5163 is.
But note that the argument was not that people will explicitly say "it has Patriot in its name and therefore this law is patriotic", but that it creates a mental image and uses the positive association with the word to frame it as such.
(A similar argument against this kind of naming can of course be found in 1984, with the "Ministry of Peace" etc).
Agreed. It's propaganda, and we should question the motives of the legislators. Who are they spinning this for? Shouldn't the bills speak for themselves, and their consituents make up their own minds?
At least some laws used to be named for their sponsors, e.g., the "Nunn–Lugar Act".
And now for something not completely different.
A more recent and more American equivalent can be found in Key and Peele's East-West Bowl sketches, wherein the collegiate all-star football players reveal names such as "Jammie Jammie-Jammie", "Quiznatodd Bidness", and "Fudge".
As of January 2015, Florida was the first and only state so far to call for this amendment. Given that 41 state constitutions already have similar provisions in place and it takes only 37 to force a convention, it seems like the biggest stumbling block for national support may simply be a lack of public awareness that the solution's already got some momentum. Hence, this reply.
[0]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9649439
[1]http://singlesubjectamendment.com
[2]"Art. III, Section 6 – Every law shall embrace but one subject and matter properly connected therewith, and the subject shall be briefly expressed in the title."
By people, do they mean "american people"? I may be wrong but my understanding from Snowden revelations is that the NSA is listening and recording without restriction all conversations from non-US citizen (whereas it was restricted to meta-data for US citizens). I don't know if the freedom act is an improvement for the rest of the world, but I doubt so. It would be nice for our american friends to understand that we value our privacy too.
I love how everyone pretends that only the US has spies. Or they say "oh but my country sucks at it so it doesn't matter". The entire West shares intel and double checks each other by espionage. Of course you don't want to condemn the entire West, that would be stupid.
We're not talking about spies here but about mass surveillance. And if that can reassure you, I wouldn't be any less upset knowing that Norway or Japan openly record all my conversations and stores them until the end of times.
But the thing I find insulting and scary here is that there are no consideration at all in this debate for non-US citizens. Basically, the message there is "sorry guys, what we did was wrong... except when it's about everybody else in the world".
And in the end, everybody suffers from that. What Snowden said in Citizenfour is that the NSA uses the British surveillance system because it has less restriction than their own concerning americans.
It would be a valuable public service -- more than all the newspaper articles and press releases -- if someone who knows all that could make a simple table: Agency | Power | Limits | Legal authority
http://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/usa-freedom-...
His official Twitter account said he'll be signing it: https://twitter.com/POTUS/status/605841647193030657
If you're a cup-is-half-full type of person, that would be enough reason to celebrate a bit.
Seriously, who in congress is going to be supporting a bill in the next 3 years to cut more powers from the spying apparatus when they can just say "We just did that, it's time to talk about X instead".
They didn't. Which I had a hard time believing.
But you're ever so correct.
[0] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/31/cia-admits-spyi...
http://nyulocal.com/national/2013/04/15/congress-quietly-rep...
You basically said.. nothing.
That the result of Snowden is this pathetic attempt would convince me that government was useless in this current form and that it has totally failed- if I weren't already convinced of that seeing the past 20 years of legislation. (I've been watching more than 20 years, but the gloves really began to come off during the Clinton administration when he banned gay marriage for no good reason (he could have simply pocket vetoed the bill.) )
My how our standards are low, and that makes this country increasingly a joke- a parody of itself, commonly summed up with the phrase "MERICA". It's not funny, it's tragedy.