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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe REAL issue is they just don’t want Snowden officially vindicated, by an act of Congress.
McConnell v. Snowden
by Tom Sullivan
Passage of the USA Freedom Act does not end the debate about privacy and government spying. It is hardly a speed bump. The FBI surveillance flights reported yesterday demonstrated that. As Digby observed last night, "And just wait until the drone fleet gets going..." The last time the press exposed a fleet of government aircraft operating behind shell corporations, the aircraft were ferrying terrorism suspects to exotic CIA "black sites" or foreign prisons for torture.
But the debate in the Senate over the Patriot Act was not about that. What Dan Froomkin wrote last week about the Patriot Act debate and Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell bears repeating:
The issue is they just dont want Snowden officially vindicated, by an act of Congress.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/02/us/politics/giving-in-a-little-on-national-security-agency-data-collection.html?_r=0
.............
The Republican "meltdown" over failure to renew the Patriot Act included what Sen. Barbara Boxer described on All In with Chris Hayes last night as a temper tantrum by McConnell. The Senate Majority leader even committed a messaging faux pas by repeating a headline calling his failure "a resounding victory for Edward Snowden." Bad move.
The Guardian this morning calls the reforms' passage a vindication for Snowden. Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden noted that more needs to be done:
http://crooksandliars.com/2015/06/senate-hammers-mcconnell-passes-nsa
Meantime, watch the skies.
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2015/06/mcconnell-v-snowden-by-bloggersrus.html
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/fivepoints/the-usa-freedom-act-explained
riderinthestorm
(23,272 posts)i notice the Snowden haters have gone virtually silent on every Snowden thread that's come down the pike recently.
Standing with the incoherently raging McConnell on this is pretty shameful - from the President down to the last DUer.