GOP blocks NSA spying reforms - All hail the Police State

Police State Republicans

• The Big Government-Big Brother loving GOP House leadership is working behind the scenes to block legislation that protects the Bill of Rights and our freedoms from attack by the NSA.
• The USA Freedom Act that limits unconstitutional NSA spying on the American people is being sent to the committee of Police State loving Congressman Mike Rogers to be voted down, shoved aside and forgotten.

Lawmakers who approve of the NSA’s bulk collection of Americans’ communications data have been accused of intentionally sidelining those in Congress who oppose the practice by re-routing the new surveillance bill through the Intelligence committee rather than the Judiciary Committee.

The legislation, which would see significant alterations to the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, will now be primarily overseen by the chamber’s Intelligence Committee, a move some say represents a deliberate circumventing of vocally critical representatives in the Judiciary Committee, which has long presided over the intelligence community’s broad legal authority.

 

“Many of our members are pretty outraged,” one staffer said. “They’re trying to undermine this committee’s clear jurisdiction, as the debate we’re having is on civil liberties and constitutional rights,” reports Infowars News.

The aide added that the move puts NSA reform in “the hands of its biggest cheerleaders.”

One of those outraged Judiciary members is Rep. Jerrold Nadler, who quickly issued a statement saying he was “deeply concerned that today, for what appears to be the first time ever, a FISA reform bill has been sent first to the House Intelligence Committee.

Nadler added: “The House Judiciary Committee must be the primary Committee at the center of this reform.”

 

The bill in question was introduced on Tuesday by Reps. Mike Rogers, chair of the Intelligence Committee, and Dutch Ruppersberger, that panel’s top Democrat. Both, especially Rogers, have been adamant defenders of NSA surveillance since Edward Snowden’s leaks began last June.

A further reason for cutting out the Judiciary Committee is that it is a stronghold of support for the USA Freedom Act, a direct rival bill that goes further to reign in the NSA. The bill is supported by vocal NSA critics including Republican Rand Paul, and Democrats Ron Wyden and Mark Udall.

The Freedom Act, which has more than 140 cosponsors but has seen little progress lately, had been referred to Judiciary, leading staffers there to expect the same would be done for Rogers’s FISA Transparency and Modernization Act. Now at least two Judiciary aides have expressed concern that the committee could be cut out of the review process entirely, as Rogers and Ruppersberger may attempt to bum-rush their bill to the House floor.