58 Senators, including Democrats, voted to allow warrantless searches by the FBI

These would be searches of various electronic items in spy and terrorism cases.

WaPo source

That's dangerously close to the 60 vote supermajority "required" in that illustrious body to pass a bill. Although it faces obstacles in the House this is exactly the sort of bill that terror hawks leverage fear to get passed. This is the kind of insidious erosion of our privacy and freedom that has broad support across partisan lines in Congress. If fear is to be a motivational force in this election, as both Democrats and Republicans seem to be basing their strategies on, I submit efforts such as this should cause much fear--of them. It's at least as alarming as any action on abortion or other critical issues like it.

This is the kind of bill that forms the first steps into open authoritarian government. It's a dangerous bill with dangerous implications. I'm glad it failed, but I'm not optimistic it will continue to. Every event like Orlando, or even less deadly but similar events, makes passage of these bills easier. I'd like to think we aren't that far gone yet.

As a side-note I'd like to see Hillary's and Donald's reactions to this bill. I have suspicions about what each would say, but I want to hear it first hand.

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cardboardurinal's picture

by politicians and the public's willingness to subject themselves to perpetual fear is so depressing. I really need to stop reading about politics. Between this, the recently announced SC decision weakening the Fourth Amendment, and the inability to live if you are not affluent in Seattle, among many other issues is severely depressing me this morning...

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We're damn near there already.

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WindDancer13's picture

Even if he does not get the nomination, he is a driving force in this country today. What he has to say would be much more honest than the other two, and we already know that HRC prefers more surveillance so whatever she has to say would just be word salad.

a list of those Democrats needs to be posted so people from their states can start a letter campaign and find people to primary them.

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We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.--Aristotle
If there is no struggle there is no progress.--Frederick Douglass

riverlover's picture

to not name names? Someone counted. Was it secret?

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Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.

Dems are just as bad as Repubs

Before the bodies were removed from the Pulse nightclub in Orlando last week, Democrats began eagerly exploiting that atrocity to demand a new, secret “terrorist watchlist”: something that was once the domestic centerpiece of the Bush/Cheney war-on-terror mentality. Led by their propaganda outlet, Center for American Progress (CAP), Democrats now want to empower the Justice Department — without any judicial adjudication — to unilaterally bar citizens who have not been charged with (let alone convicted of) any crime from purchasing guns.

Worse than the measure itself is the rancid rhetoric they are using. To justify this new list, Democrats, in unison, are actually arguing that the U.S. government must constrain people whom they are now calling “potential terrorists.” Just spend a moment pondering how creepy and Orwellian that phrase is in the context of government designations.

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cardboardurinal's picture

Greenwald's article on my facebook page. Its a good read. Before reading that though, I had made a similar argument with a friend:

I don't necessarily disagree with the argument. The idea of blocking someone who is on the "terrorist watchlist" MAY have prevented the Orlando Massacre, but it doesn't really address the proliferation of guns nor does it truly address hate crimes against the LGBTQ community. The "terrorist watchlist" is far too broad in scope, too secretive, and sweeps up far too many people who have no ties to terrorism. These people are never actually accused of committing a crime. Using the "terrorist watchlist" is a feel good fix. It will be a reactionary effort, much like the invasive scans and taking off your shoes to get through TSA checks.

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an opposition to the right, and as a group of left-wingers. They do more damage to the ideals of leftism than the GOP ever could.

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shaharazade's picture

'Terrist's are gonna kill yer family' said the Terrorist in Chief Bush2. Like cardboardurinal I'm really hitting don't give a fuck about politics. Terrorism is what the US creates in order to engage in an endless war and a police state with no rule of law. The state needs your universal civil and human rights as they are a 'tool' that's needed to win the war on terra. No one in power including the progressives are going to repeal the Patriot Act and the other odious Act's that have legalized this assault on democracy and those pesky inalienable self evident truths. The 'terrorist watchlist' does not feel good to me, the fact that they have such a thing is way more terrifying then any 'radicalized' terrorist. Fearful, hateful, violent armed people are a symptom of this sick society. They are also a handy distraction that allows the 'owners of the place' to ramp up the clamp down while notching up the violence to 11.

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detroitmechworks's picture

Course, that's a sucker bet, since neither one of them ever saw a security/fascist bill they didn't like.

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I do not pretend I know what I do not know.

IowanX's picture

You can't find out who is on it. You can't find out if YOU are on it until they stop you at the airport. You can't appeal it in court, even in cases of mistaken identity. There is no "burden of proof". There is no "probable cause". There's no judge weighing evidence. It could be 3 "jumps" by the NSA, to suck in more names for the machine (thank you EmptyWheel).

The fact that D's are using THIS list as a gun control vehicle just seems wrong-headed, anti-historical (well, not really)--and intended primarily to keep Trump off TV. Maybe it will work, but I think the Fourth Amendment issues with these "Watch Lists" is a big problem.

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Bollox Ref's picture

the FBI can monitor their transactions for 3-4 weeks, just for practice.

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Gëzuar!!
from a reasonably stable genius.

what act will be our very own Reichstag fire? What event will precipitate the final loss of our freedoms and our descent into tyranny?

This is the kind of bill that forms the first steps into open authoritarian government.

And that's all it will take for democracy to die.

I'm reminded again of the words of Milton Mayer:

"What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could understand it, it could not be released because of national security.
...
This separation of government from people, this widening of the gap, took place so gradually and so insensibly, each step disguised (perhaps not even intentionally) as a temporary emergency measure or associated with true patriotic allegiance or with real social purposes. And all the crises and reforms (real reforms, too) so occupied the people that they did not see the slow motion underneath, of the whole process of government growing remoter and remoter.
...
Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don’t want to act, or even talk, alone; you don’t want to ‘go out of your way to make trouble.’ Why not? - Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty.
...
To live in this process is absolutely not to be able to notice it - please try to believe me - unless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity, than most of us had ever had occasion to develop. Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, ‘regretted,’
...
Suddenly it all comes down, all at once. You see what you are, what you have done, or, more accurately, what you haven’t done (for that was all that was required of most of us: that we do nothing). You remember those early meetings of your department in the university when, if one had stood, others would have stood, perhaps, but no one stood. A small matter, a matter of hiring this man or that, and you hired this one rather than that. You remember everything now, and your heart breaks. Too late. You are compromised beyond repair."

They Thought They Were Free

I don't want to live, knowing and regretting, when I could have spoken out but didn't, whether it was through fear or uncertainty.

We may not be heard, but must not let this pass without comment. We cannot, in good conscience, remain silent.

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Amanda Matthews's picture

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I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are. - Bill Hicks

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry. - Frank Zappa