Rand Paul wants to lead a Supreme Court challenge to Feds' tracking of Americans

What amazes me is the hypocrisy in all this. The American people have basically known about this since about 2006. It&#x27;s just that there wasn&#x27;t as much proof or specifics but the media covered this and it was pretty much common knowledge that all phone calls and Internet activity were being watched. Of course that&#x27;s not okay and I still get the current outrage. Totally understandable.<p>But then there are the senators... These guys approved this activity long ago and while not all of them knew the specifics the Intelligence Committe did. They were taken into meetings where no note taking tools or anything with a battery was allowed and briefed about this.<p>Now that this story breaks the senate gets their panties in a twist like this is news to them. They simultaneously defend it and condemn it.<p>It isn&#x27;t fair to make such a blanket statement about the entire Senate, I know but what I&#x27;m really getting at here is that what Rand Paul is doing doesn&#x27;t strike me as sincere at all. It looks like a dog and pony show set up to make it look like someone gives a shit while they all keep getting briefed and voting for this stuff behind closed doors.<p>It&#x27;s like set up a bunch of PR stunts to make us feel warm and funny then do the opposite while no one is paying attention. On this issue I feel like its the guys trying to get attention the most who can be trusted the least.

Since he&#x27;s a member of the Senate, a more direct route than the judicial branch would be to pursue legislative-branch solutions, such as introducing a bill to amend the FISA statute in a more civil-liberties-friendly manner.

I was surprised by Rand Paul&#x27;s proposed bill &quot;To stop the [NSA] from spying on citizens of the United States&quot;:<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.paul.senate.gov&#x2F;files&#x2F;documents&#x2F;EAS13699.pdf" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.paul.senate.gov&#x2F;files&#x2F;documents&#x2F;EAS13699.pdf</a><p>The effective body is fairly direct: &quot;The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution shall not be construed to allow any agency of the United States Government to search the phone records of Americans without a warrant based on probable cause.&quot;<p>What really surprised me was that it used the word &quot;search&quot;, rather than, say, &quot;collect&quot;. Given that we don&#x27;t know what happened to the records gathered under Stellar Wind&#x2F;RAGTIME, it&#x27;s possible that the activity would still be legal under Paul&#x27;s bill.<p>I&#x27;m curious whether this choice of wording was intentional or accidental.

What does that mean, &quot;lead a Supreme Court challenge?&quot;<p>From what I understand, they&#x27;d have to file lawsuit with a lower court and fight the long long road up to the SC docket.

Rand Paul needs a class in civics, looks like.

The interesting side story behind all of this, that HN isn&#x27;t looking at at all, is the &quot;bi-partisanship as usual&quot; reaction from outside Washington.<p>A reason something might come of this? Ironically, it is because the Rush Limbaugh crowd look at it as a way to get Obama, et al, while liberals are equally aghast. Never mind that it was all spearheaded by a Republican administration.<p>Now, as for me, I vote Green &amp; don&#x27;t like any of &#x27;em - but it&#x27;s nice to see everyone looking like they might agree on something for once.

Do I need a warrant to get Obama&#x27;s data for my data analysis project?

I heard my neighbor making bomb threats against the goverment (not me, my neighbor) although I am mad at my government..

Yeah this should happen, but no Rand Paul shouldn&#x27;t be in front of it.

Rand Paul would probably do a lot more good by learning how to think rationally.