We begin today's roundup with
The New York Times editorial urging lawmakers to let certain Patriot Act provisions expire:
Barring a last-minute compromise, congressional authorization for the program the government uses to sweep up Americans’ phone records in bulk will lapse on Sunday. That would be perfectly fine.
The looming expiration of a handful of provisions of the Patriot Act, which gave federal authorities vast surveillance powers, has stirred a long-overdue debate over the proper balance between investigative tactics in national security cases and civil liberties. That debate should be allowed to continue, with the goal of reaching a compromise that ensures that surveillance programs are subject to substantive judicial oversight and that Americans have a clear understanding of the data the government is allowed to collect.
Shane Harris at The Daily Beast:
While lawmakers could once be counted on to reliably reauthorize the Patriot Act—and accuse opponents of risking national security if they failed to do so—leaks by Edward Snowden about spying operations have eroded the law’s support. In the House, USA Freedom was pitched as a compromise that would suspend the phone records program while leaving other measures that intelligence agencies say they need intact. The bill has enjoyed support among some privacy and civil liberties advocates. [...]
Three major Patriot provisions are on the chopping block: So-called roving wiretaps, which let the government monitor one person’s multiple electronic devices; the “lone-wolf” provision, which allows surveillance of someone who’s not connected to a known terrorist group; and Section 215, which, among other things, the government uses to collect the records of all landline phone calls in the United States.
More on the day's top stories below the fold.
Mark Jaycox at The Electronic Frontier Foundation give us the rundown on what's happened on the Senate floor so far and what's ahead:
What Will Happen Sunday?
It's unclear. The Obama Administration unsurprisingly left itself wiggle room to continue the calling records program. In the same DOJ memo noting the program's closure, the administration also said that if the House passed a Senate reauthorization on June 1—technically after the provisions expire—the White House would continue the provisions. While there are news reports of further compromise on the House's USA Freedom Act, lead cosponsor Rep. Jerry Nadler has ruled out any further weakening of the bill.
What we do know is that the Senate calendar says it may hold another vote on the USA Freedom Act in the afternoon. Sen. McConnell is vigorously campaigning to reauthorize Section 215 without any reform. Any vote scheduled in the afternoon of May 31—about 8 hours before the provisions formally expire—will surely be used to fear-monger for a short-term reauthorization. In response, the Senate must stand strong and vote down any short-term reauthorization.
Over at The Huffington Post,
Daniel Marans explains how the Patriot Act led to the indictment of former House speaker Dennis Hastert:
On Oct. 24, 2001, then-House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) shepherded the Patriot Act through the House of Representatives. It passed 357 to 66, advancing to the Senate and then-President George W. Bush’s desk for signing.
Hastert took credit for House passage in a 2011 interview, claiming it “wasn’t popular, and there was a lot of fight in the Congress” over it.
Little did Hastert know at the time that the law he helped pass would give federal law enforcement the tools to indict him on charges of violating banking-related reporting requirements more than a decade later.
Kaveh Waddell and Dustin Volz:
Ten senators have the future of the Patriot Act in their hands.
They will be the ones who can make or break any deal on whether or not to reauthorize or reform the National Security Agency's bulk spying programs—or to continue down a path to letting the Patriot Act Section 215 language lapse altogether.
In theory, the Senate is out until Sunday afternoon, but staffers will be burning up the phone lines until then—and these are the senators who matter the most. And if reformers want to bolster their cause, they will need to win over three of them to get the USA Freedom Act from 57 votes to a filibuster-proof 60.
Switching topics,
Jay Bookman explains the GOP's Iraq problem:
It’s not a surprise that Republicans remain more supportive than most Americans of a war initiated and led by a Republican administration. But the scale of the divergence between Republicans and their fellow Americans is pretty stunning. To this day, and by more than a two-to-one ratio, Republicans still believe that the war was a good idea.
Or at least they say they believe that. Given the blowback from the war, I have to think that some of those 62 percent are acting out of sheer cussedness in refusing to admit the mistake to a pollster. But Republican pollsters are probably producing similar numbers in their own internal surveys, which helps to explain the awkward straddling act by their candidates. It tells you a lot about what the GOP base will be demanding from a potential nominee.
Jonathan Bernstein adds his take:
It remains weird that Republicans haven’t abandoned the rhetoric, the thinking or the people behind such a disastrous policy. The obvious parallel: the 1970s Democrats who went through the painful process of evicting almost everyone involved in Vietnam.
For Republicans, however, it isn't clear the short-term costs of dealing with Bush-era failures would have any electoral payoff. My guess? Republicans paid in the 2006 and 2008 elections and, at this point, won't suffer further losses no matter how far they are from median public opinion about Iraq. Unless, that is, retaining the people and ideas who led them into the Iraq War produces further policy fiascoes next time they win the White House -- which is entirely possible, unfortunately.
On a final note,
Eugene Robinson calls out the GOP for its "fuzzy" Mideast plan:
Oh, there’s no shortage of tough-guy rhetoric that sounds as if it were stolen from a big-budget Hollywood action movie. Actually, some of it was stolen from a big-budget Hollywood action movie: Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) appropriates Liam Neeson’s signature line from the movie “Taken,” shifts it from the first-person singular to the plural, and declares to terrorists, “We will look for you, we will find you and we will kill you.” [...] But do we also blow up Mosul, one of Iraq’s biggest cities? And the half of Syria that is under Islamic State control? Someone should inform Santorum that Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad has been trying this approach since the civil war began and that it hasn’t worked.[...] Eventually, one hopes, some candidate will come up with credible alternatives to Obama’s Mideast policies. So far, not even close.