Jeb Bush says Rand Paul ‘wrong’ on surveillance
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush says Republican presidential candidate Rand Paul is “wrong” on his efforts to cause post-Sept. 11 surveillance laws used against suspected spies and terrorists to expire.
Bush said at a Tennessee Republican Party fundraiser in Nashville on Saturday called for the reauthorization of the Patriot Act enacted under the presidency of his older brother George W. Bush.
Jeb Bush, a likely Republican presidential candidate, said he most admires his brother because “he kept us safe” during his presidency. Bush said he does not consider the collection of domestic phone metadata a violation of civil rights.
Bush declined to respond to Paul recently blaming foreign policy hawks in his own party for the rise of the Islamic State group, saying he wanted to “stay out of trouble.”
Jeb Bush says Rand Paul 'wrong' on surveillance
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) -- Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush says Republican presidential candidate Rand Paul is "wrong" on his efforts to cause post-Sept. 11 surveillance laws used against suspected spies and terrorists to expire.
Bush said at a Tennessee Republican Party fundraiser in Nashville on Saturday called for the reauthorization of the Patriot Act enacted under the presidency of his older brother George W. Bush.
Jeb Bush, a likely Republican presidential candidate, said he most admires his brother because "he kept us safe" during his presidency. Bush said he does not consider the collection of domestic phone metadata a violation of civil rights.
Bush declined to respond to Paul recently blaming foreign policy hawks in his own party for the rise of the Islamic State group, saying he wanted to "stay out of trouble."
WASHINGTON — Pushing the government toward a shutdown of its bulk collection of surveillance data, Republican Sen. Rand Paul all but promised to tie the Senate in procedural knots during a special session Sunday on whether to keep the National Security Agency program running past an end-of-the-weekend deadline.
Paul, who has made ending the program a centerpiece of his presidential campaign, announced his intentions Saturday, defying party leaders and a broad coalition of lawmakers who would prefer to reform the program.
“There has to be another way,” Paul said in a statement Saturday. “So tomorrow, I will force the expiration of the NSA illegal spy program. I am ready and willing to start the debate on how we fight terrorism without giving up our liberty.”
The program’s authorization is set to expire at midnight Sunday, but the NSA has said its complicated shutdown will get under way hours earlier as the Senate convenes Sunday afternoon for a rare session that cuts short its Memorial Day weeklong recess.
The libertarian-leaning Paul said he was not pulling a campaign stunt but holding true to his principles, a position emboldened after a federal court ruling this month found the NSA’s program of bulk collection of phone records unconstitutional.
But under Senate rules, anything short of swift passage of a House-passed reform bill would take days, if not weeks, leaving the intelligence community without access to information it says is crucial to detecting terrorist plots.
The surveillance program sweeps up the time, date and phone numbers of almost every domestic call, and Paul has long said that is too great a cost. “Sometimes, when the problem is big enough, you just have to start over,” he said.
Under Senate rules, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Paul’s fellow Kentucky Republican, cannot proceed to legislation unless he has the consent of all the senators. Even one objection, like the one from Paul, would force a series of time-consuming procedural steps that could drag on for days.
Other senators have allied with Paul in his opposition to the surveillance program, notably Democrat Ron Wyden of Oregon.
McConnell had left open the possibility of reconsidering the House bill, the USA Freedom Act. He has opposed the measure, which fell three votes short of advancing in the Senate last weekend, but it is supported by a wide bipartisan swath of senators and the White House, and many believe it could pass if McConnell let it.
House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., urged the Senate to pass the bill. “Now is not the time to be playing games with our national security,” he said in a statement.
McConnell could have also tried again for a stopgap measure to keep the surveillance program running while the Senate considers other options. But that idea has been met with broad opposition and now seems even more unlikely with Paul’s stance.
Democrats sought Saturday to pile on McConnell.
“Sen. Paul is only in a position to force the (surveillance program) to expire because of Sen. McConnell’s reckless, irresponsible tactics and inability to communicate with his fellow Republicans,” a spokesman for Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada said in a statement.
The bulk surveillance program was begun secretly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks with the aim of detecting further terrorist activity. In 2006, after it was revealed, the Bush administration began citing the Patriot Act to justify the program.
The information the NSA gathers on every domestic phone call, called metadata, is collected without callers’ knowledge and without a warrant identifying individuals suspected of wrongdoing.
If the section of the Patriot Act authorizing bulk metadata collection lapses, so too would other sections of the legislation used by authorities in their search for terrorist plots.
One of them, the “lone wolf” provision, allows authorities latitude to go after individuals who aren’t affiliated with identified terrorist groups.
Another threatened provision allows the FBI to wiretap extra phone lines linked to a suspect without requesting new warrants. Authorities contend that it allows law enforcement to quickly track down suspects.
President Barack Obama warned Friday that if the Senate didn’t act on Sunday, a terrorist could slip past the intelligence agencies.
“I don’t want us to be in a situation in which, for a certain period of time, these authorities go away and suddenly we’re dark,” he said. “Heaven forbid we’ve got a problem where we could have presented a terrorist attack or apprehended someone who is engaged in dangerous activity, but we can’t do so simply because of inaction in the Senate.”
