Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was an asshole starting the series of votes in the Senate in what was to become his NSA surveillance reform debacle.
McConnell on Hse ldrs begging Senate not to change NSA bill: You'd think it was the Ten Commandments
— @ChadPergram
But the House warnings that any of the amendments he was intending to add to the USA Freedom Act would be dead in that chamber made an impression with enough of the rest of Senate Republicans to join with Democrats in defeating all of his amendments and passing the USA Freedom Act as sent from the House, 67-32.
He was an asshole to the bitter end, giving an embarrassing speech before the final vote, trying to deflect blame to President Obama for making the nation less safe, and far worse.
McConnell calls the USA Freedom Act a "resounding victory for those who are currently plotting against our homeland."
— @frankthorpNBC
All McConnell got out of this exercise was causing Republican senators to revolt along with Rand Paul and provide him with a massive leadership defeat. His amendments—to gut the privacy advisory board to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, to extend the transition of data retention to the telecoms from six months to one year, and to require that telecoms notify the government 6 months in advance of changes in data retention and that the Director of National Intelligence certify that the program transitions successfully—all failed with comfortable margins on simple majority votes. This was a remarkable and embarrassing miscalculation on McConnell's part, from his insistence that the Patriot Act be extended without reforms to his attempt to bully both the Senate and the House.
The result is he forced the three expiring Patriot Act provisions to be shut down. He gave a huge platform to Rand Paul and in the future to Ted Cruz to use opposition to him in their presidential bids. He needlessly alienated other Republicans and further poisoned his relationship with the House leadership. It's as massive a disaster in leadership as we're used to seeing in the House! It's also unthinkable that McConnell's predecessor from the other side—Harry Reid—could have ever bungled anything so thoroughly.