Senate Dems Back Domestic Spying Nominee David Barron For A Judgeship

Shenna Bellows (D) and Rand Paul (R)-- a real bipartisan approach

Thank God, some of our candidates-- particularly Shenna Bellows (ME) and Jay Stamper (SC) for Senate and Ted Lieu (CA) and Alan Grayson (FL) for the House-- are taking a stand against unconstitutional domestic spying. And a few Democrats in the Senate, particularly Mark Udall (CO) and Ron Wyden (OR) are doing some actual fighting against Obama and his NSA. But, truth be told, a lot of the heavy lifting in this crucial battle is coming from libertarian Republicans Justin Amash (MI) in the House and Rand Paul (KY) in the Senate. A few Democrats-- particularly Bellows and Stamper-- have been advocating a transpartisan effort that will put the privacy interests of Americans first.

This week, in an OpEd for the Washington Post, Reining in the surveillance state, Katrina van den Heuvel gave Rand Paul his due on this critical issue. "Paul vowed," she wrote, "to filibuster the nomination to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit of former Justice Department official David Barron, who helped write memos supporting said argument." Wednesday afternoon the Senate shut down his filibuster, every Democrat but Manchin (WV) and Landrieu (LA) voting against him. In the end it was 52-43, all the Republicans ready, as always, to just filibuster everything and anything from the administration.

Paul’s strong libertarian principles have always differentiated him from many of his Republican colleagues. It is, therefore, not all that shocking for him to speak out against a president he dislikes on a policy he disdains. Yet his outspokenness has many liberals and leftists asking a legitimate question: Why aren’t there more Democratic voices opposing the surveillance state? Protecting civil liberties should be a critical piece of the progressive platform, but too many establishment Democrats and progressives have been silent on this issue simply because one of their own is in the White House.

Some Democrats in Congress have taken bold stands. Longtime civil-liberties champion (and former House Judiciary Committee chair) John Conyers has worked to limit the National Security Agency’s collection of bulk telephone data. Reps. Keith Ellison of Minnesota and Adam B. Schiff of California have probed the administration’s drone and surveillance programs. Rep. Zoe Lofgren of California is pushing to prevent the NSA from weakening online encryption. In the Senate, Judiciary Committee chair Patrick Leahy of Vermont has held oversight hearings questioning excessive surveillance. Even Dianne Feinstein of California, chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and normally a committed defender of the intelligence community, finally spoke out after discovering that the CIA spied on Senate staffers. And last week, Sens.Mark Udall of Colorado and Ron Wyden of Oregon sent a letter to Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr., strongly criticizing a “culture of misinformation” that has resulted in “misleading statements . . . about domestic surveillance.” And Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont, has proposed a bill limiting FBI and NSA spying.

Still, too many Democrats and even progressives are reluctant to challenge the Obama administration, either because they don’t want to criticize a besieged president or because they’re focused on other priorities. As they stay silent, a host of troubling policies, including the assassination of U.S. citizens without due process, the prosecution of record numbers of journalists and whistleblowers, the unaccountable growth of the surveillance state and the vast expansion of the drone program, are proliferating unchecked.

To combat the spread of these policies, we need not just outraged rhetoric but also serious, concrete actions to seek accountability. And we need more progressive elected officials who are willing to fight for change.

We need leaders such as Shenna Bellows, who is running for the U.S. Senate in Maine. In her eight years leading Maine’s American Civil Liberties Union, Bellows has consistently worked across the aisle, bringing together unlikely allies to pass marriage equality, to restore same-day voter registration in the state and to make Maine one of only two states to establish cellphone privacy protections in the wake of the recent NSA spying revelations.

Bellows is an eloquent, vocal champion of progressive values across the board. But she is particularly focused on what she calls “the surveillance industrial complex.” “I just disagree on the amount of intrusion that is acceptable in our private lives,” she recently told MSNBC. Bellows wants to repeal the USA Patriot Act and release the CIA’s 6,000-page report on torture practices after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. She has expressed an interest in working with Paul and others on anti-surveillance legislation.

According to polls, Bellows has a tough race to unseat incumbent Susan Collins, a Republican. But she is leveraging her considerable organizing skills. And while Collins has vastly more money in her campaign coffers, Bellows-- who recently earned belated support from Emily’s List and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee-- outraised Collins in the last quarter of 2013.

Bellows has been called “the woman who could be the future of progressive politics in America.” While this overstates the case, her unwavering commitment to civil liberties gives hope that progressives will soon have a champion who can help lead a transpartisan fight to rein in the national security state’s unconstitutional overreach.

You can contribute to Bellows' campaign-- and Stamper's-- here on our Senate ActBlue page.




UPDATE: Congress Authorizes More Unconstitutional Domestic Spying

Jim Sensenbrenner's Orwellian-named USA Freedom Act passed this morning, 303-121, most members of both parties eager to continue warrentless, unconstitutional bulk spying against American citizens. During the debate Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), who said, "regrettably, we have learned that if we leave any ambiguity in the law, the intelligence agencies run a truck right through that ambiguity," and Alan Grayson (D-FL) joined libertarians like Justin Amash in calling out Military-Intelligence Complex shills, Mike Rogers (R-MI) and Dutch Ruppersberger (D-MD) for their treachery against the American people and the Constitution. Amash: “This morning's bill maintains and codifies a large-scale, unconstitutional domestic spying program." 70 Democrats and 51 Republicans voted against the bill, a veritable declaration of war against the American people. Suggestion: fight back-- vote against all 179 Republicans and 124 Democrats who voted to violate our rights and the Constitution.

A bold-face lie:

The truth:

Blue America Welcomes Rep. Walter Jones (R-NC)

We've been doing the Blue America live chats for almost seven years. Today at 3pm (ET, noon on the West Coast) we're proud to welcome our very first Republican ever, Rep. Walter Jones of North Carolina. As usual, the live session will be at Crooks and Liars. Please stop by. This isn't a fundraiser or an endorsement session, although I couldn't help noticing that last year the mainstream conservative, libertarian-leaning Jones voted more frequently with progressives on crucial roll call votes than 3 of North Carolina's "Democratic" congressmen-- Shuler, McIntyre and Kissell.

If you watched one of MSNBC's presentations of Hubris in recent weeks, you must have noticed the spotlight that was shined on Rep. Jones because of the way he reached inside himself-- and reached out through his strongly held religious beliefs-- to reassess his vote for Bush's illegitimate attack on Iraq in 2002. It profoundly changed Walter Jones-- if not as a man (I barely know him enough to say), as a Member of Congress. Now you find him working across the aisle-- with sincere advocates of peace from both parties-- on issues that aren't especially partisan... just especially American. It was Alan Grayson who introduced me to him and when I told Raul Grijalva Rep. Jones would be a Blue America guest today he told me he recalled, vividly, "the long years of the Bush/Cheney machine and how hard it was to find a Republican to speak the truth. My colleague Walter Jones became an almost lone voice of reason in his party and he's stayed true to his word every day since. I'm glad to have him on our side. When it comes to real checks and balances, Congress' oversight duties, drone attacks and warmaking, he's been as right as anyone, and I'm happy to see him get the recognition he deserves for his courage."

Last year John Boehner had Rep. Jones' bill, HCR 107 (which was co-sponsored by, among others, Grijalva, Lynn Woolsey and Dennis Kucinich, as well as Ron Paul and... Louie Gohmert, who, admittedly, will cosponsor anything that uses the word "impeachable") bottled up in committee, where it died without so much as a hearing. The bill simply expressed "the sense of Congress that the use of offensive military force by a President without prior and clear authorization of an Act of Congress constitutes an impeachable high crime and misdemeanor under article II, section 4 of the Constitution."

In November Walter Jones was reelected with a robust 63% of the vote, the biggest margin of any Republican in the state-- much to the chagrin of Eric Cantor, who had encouraged a primary challenge against him with money he got from Sheldon Adelson. Immediately upon reelection, Jones reintroduced his resolution, this time as HCR 3. This is the letter he sent to every Member of Congress explaining it, prefaced with a quote from James Madison: allowing the President alone to take the country into war would be "too much of a temptation for one man."

Dear Colleague:

Over the last 20 years American presidents have assumed powers that our Constitution does not explicitly give the commander-in-chief. From the U.S. intervention in Bosnia to the recent U.S. involvement in Libya, Congress did not authorize the use of military force. However, the president continues to send our forces into harm's way without congressional approval. To address this issue, I have introduced H. Con. Res. 3. This resolution reaffirms that the power to declare war resides in the U.S. Congress. Under Article 1, Section 8, except in response to an actual or imminent attack against the territory of the United States, the president must come to the Congress to initiate hostilities. The proceedings of the Constitutional Convention make clear that the framers firmly believed that the momentous consequences of initiating armed hostilities should be decided not by a single individual, but only by concurrence of both houses of Congress.

H. Con. Res. 3 affirms that if a president, any president, violates this most fundamental constitutional provision, doing so would constitute an impeachable high crime and misdemeanor under Article 2, Section 4, of the U.S. Constitution.

I ask you to join me as a co-sponsor of this important resolution. Thank you for your consideration.

"[M]y concern has always been," he said last year, "since we were misled with the intelligence to go into Iraq, and all the number of young men and women who have been killed, and loss of limbs, that Congress needs to come back to what the Constitution says, and that is, if you’re going to commit our young men and women to fight and die, you must declare war.” This session he's also co-sponsoring a bill, HR 125 with Rosa DeLauro (R-CT) that has a fascinating genesis. The bill was originally introduced in the Senate by then-Senators Clinton and Obama. Jones simply changed the word “Iraq” to “Afghanistan.” The bill directs the Secretary of State to submit to Congress an unclassified report providing the justification for the President's decision to deny Congress its constitutionally protected role by concluding an agreement on the future of the security relationship between the United States and Afghanistan as an executive agreement." Jim McGovern (D-MA) and Mo Brooks (R-AL) have since signed on as cosponsors. Boehner has it bottled up in the House Foreign Affairs Committee where Ed Royce is sitting on it. (Brooks is also a member of the committee, as is Grayson.)

Don't forget-- today at 3pm (ET) at Crooks and Liars... let's see how progressives and libertarians can work together on issues of common interest.