Cruz seeks to refocus NSA debate on ‘bad guys’

NBC Politics ^ | 01/16/2014 | Tom Curry

[SoConPubbie]

Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, a potential 2016 Republican presidential contender, is trying to refocus the debate over National Security Agency surveillance on the terrorists who actually succeed in pulling off attacks in the United States.

Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, a potential 2016 Republican presidential contender, is trying to refocus the debate over National Security Agency surveillance on the terrorists who actually succeed in pulling off attacks in the United States.

“The federal government has not been effective enough monitoring and surveilling bad guys,” Cruz said this week as the Senate awaited President Barack Obama’s NSA reform proposals which he’ll announce Friday. “We have not succeeded in preventing what should have been preventable terrorist attacks,” such as Major Nidal Hassan’s shooting spree at Fort Hood, Texas in which he killed 13 people.

Cruz agrees with Democrats such as Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Sen. Patrick Leahy that “the sweep of the surveillance has been far too broad with respect to law-abiding citizens.” Cruz said many Americans want to see “far greater scrutiny on bad guys, people that we have reason to suspect may be planning a terrorist attack” and “far more protection for law-abiding citizens….”

When Cruz questioned members of Obama’s advisory panel on NSA reforms, one member, Harvard law professor Cass Sunstein pointed to a key recommendation the panel  has made that would give expanded emergency powers to the NSA to track terrorists suspects as soon as they the enter the United States, even before a warrant is granted.

The recommendation is “of great importance,” Sunstein said, but “it's gotten essentially no attention, so far as I can tell -- not even on Twitter has it gotten attention.”

[SoConPubbie]

"If we must have an enemy at the head of Government, let it be one whom we can oppose, and for whom we are not responsible, who will not involve our party in the disgrace of his foolish and bad measures." - Alexander Hamilton "We don't intend to turn the Republican Party over to the traitors in the battle just ended. We will have no more of those candidates who are pledged to the same goals as our opposition and who seek our support. Turning the Party over to the so-called moderates wouldn’t make any sense at all." -- President Ronald Reagan "A thing moderately good is not so good as it ought to be. Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is always a vice." - Thomas Paine 1792 "It does not take a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men." - Samuel Adams "If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or your arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen." - Samuel Adams

[SoConPubbie]

Ted Cruz Ping!

If you want on/off this ping list, please let me know.

Please beware, this is a high-volume ping list!

[OneWingedShark]

Ignoring the requirement of a warrant makes you a bad guy.

[apoliticalone]

Unless we want to become a bankrupt fascist socialist commie security state like the Soviets and East Germany, the time is now to have a real debate on how to end the perpetual war on terrorism, instead of allowing corrupt politicians in our government to take away more of our rights and our treasury so that a special few can profit.

[Georgia Girl 2]

“The federal government has not been effective enough monitoring and surveilling bad guys”

Because its so much easier to spy on you and me.

[firebrand]

Everyone should just take a breath. The data is out there. Anyone who wanted to copy it and had access to it has copied it already. That’s how electronic communications work. Bye bye, privacy. It was nice knowing you.

[trebb]

I’m sure some of the folks at NSA actually started out looking for terrorists. Then, they noticed that the widow Jones didn’t keep her window shades all pulled completely down...