161–170 of 243 posts
What's most interesting is that this wasn't on party lines. The yes/no mix is very mixed party-wise. https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_votes/vote1...
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> Our Constitution gives powers to the executive that cannot be usurped or overruled by Congress, notably in this context to conduct the national defense and foreign affairs. This is not true. The constitution explicitly reserves the power to declare war or enact treaties to Congress. Neither the military nor federal law enforcement can spend a single dime, or even exist, without Congressional approval. If the budget…
Yes, Congress can defund the FBI, NSA, DIA, … or simply forbid them from spending money on foreign surveillance. What they can’t do is allow them to spend money on foreign surveillance, but only if an Article 3 court gives them a warrant.
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Neither am I cheering for it. Don't put words in my mouth. I am seriously asking whether being flat-out unconstitutional is worse than building a (legislated and approved) backdoor around the constitution, yes. I mean, better than both would be to just follow the constitution , but that wasn't the question.
Please note that at no point I said that you specifically cheered, so no need to project. It’s a threaded topic. As you noticed, following constitution is apparently not an option here. Being unconstitutional and ignored, there was at least some hope for improvement, but codification gave us a clear answer that elected representatives are, at best, only selectively interested in supporting constitution.
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Yes, Congress can defund the FBI, NSA, DIA, … or simply forbid them from spending money on foreign surveillance. What they can’t do is allow them to spend money on foreign surveillance, but only if an Article 3 court gives them a warrant.
And what exactly stops them from doing that, as a condition of how they spend the money? You could certainly have budget allocation for "surveillance conducted pursuant to a warrant" that prevents the money from being wasted on useless surveillance of innocent people.
Or funding the Department of Justice, but with the proviso that any nominee for Attorney General must be over age 60.
The power of the purse is not unlimited.
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> Yet it's hard to bring these issues up today without being labeled a far right conspiracist. This really isn't all that true in my experience. And, I mean, look at the discussion here... Maybe consider the people you hang around with?
It's definitely who you hang around with, but I think how the conversation is approached also dictates outcome. Talk about a political ruling class with most people, and they'll look at you as though you grew a third eyeball. Talk about the Dems and Repubs being out of touch with the average person due to the insulative effect of DC, and they'll usually agree. You can generally convey the same idea gently as long as…
What's most interesting is that this wasn't on party lines. The yes/no mix is very mixed party-wise. https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_votes/vote1...
What’s more surprising is the split in IL between Duckworth (yea) and Durban (Nay). Usually you don’t see states splitting too much. Tennessee was all Nays for instance.
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And what exactly stops them from doing that, as a condition of how they spend the money? You could certainly have budget allocation for "surveillance conducted pursuant to a warrant" that prevents the money from being wasted on useless surveillance of innocent people.
The Constitution. What you’re saying is no different from Congress declaring war and funding the army, but with the proviso they must clear all battles with a Federal judge before they’re begun. Or funding the Department of Justice, but with the proviso that any nominee for Attorney General must be over age 60. The power of the purse is not unlimited.
You're proposing an alternative where the executive gets to decide how money is spent. As if mass surveillance, which is a waste of money, has to be funded in order to fund ordinary investigations.
The executive is the weakest branch. It has almost no powers of its own, and shouldn't. It's checks and balances. For something to happen, the executive has to want to do it and Congress has to fund it. Not one or the other; both.
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Because politicians want power and control over the citizens. They might use it for different things, but power is power.
I'm pretty damn sure you have it backwards. The intelligence crapmunity wants power, and politicians are merely the means to an end. See what happens when a politician of any stature dares to defy them.
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People just toss comments like this around as though they were facts when in fact it’s completely paranoid made up q-anon level nonsense. These laws work a very specific way and have very specific controls in place to prevent shit like you describe from happening which you could go and read up on if you wanted to but it’s much easier to fear monger amongst one another because it plays to your ego that somebody who is…
https://apnews.com/article/fisa-foreign-surveillance-fbi-3f7... One does not have to be “important enough” if they are conducting mass surveillance and storing it in a database indefinitely.
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A couple years ago I stumbled upon this YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qz27n1tNNMg The summary is this: - Votes in the House and Senate used to be anonymous - They then decided to make them public under the reasoning of transparency - One side effect of making them public is that you got people like Grover Norquist and The Americans for Tax Reform who could see who voted for taxes and then use that to…
I'm not convinced that this is a problem. Lobbyists and special interests already knew how politicians voted, they just knew via old fashioned grapevine methods. There was an information asymmetry between well connected lobbyists and average people. The fact that no longer exists is a good thing, in the long and short term.