Senate adjourns with no clear path forward on Patriot Act

The Senate failed to move forward on legislation to reform the National Security Agency or renew the Patriot Act early on Saturday morning, making it almost a sure bet that portions of the Patriot Act expire at the end of the month.

After a frenzied series of votes that were repeatedly knocked down, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) ordered lawmakers to return home for the Memorial Day weekend and return at noon on May 31 for a rare Sunday session and “one more opportunity to act responsibly.”

That would give lawmakers just 12 hours to act before portions of the Patriot Act expire — a conclusion almost everyone has said would seriously hamper national security.

“We know what’s going on overseas. We know what’s been tried here at home,’ an exasperated McConnell told lawmakers after 1 a.m.

“We’ve got a week to discuss it. We’ll have one day to do it,” he added. “But we’d better get ready next Sunday afternoon to prevent the country from the danger by the total expiration of the program.”

Starting shortly after midnight on Saturday morning, the Senate voted 57-42 to block legislation to reform the NSA, called the USA Freedom Act.

The late vote to block the USA Freedom Act — approved by the House last week in a bipartisan 338-88 vote — was quickly followed by a vote to kill a planned two-month extension of the current law from McConnell, 45-54. Sixty votes were needed to win on the procedural motion and proceed to the bill.

Then, in a dramatic turn on the Senate floor, McConnell repeatedly tried — and was repeatedly blocked — to extend the June 1 deadline of the Patriot Act provisions to June 8, then June 5, followed by June 3 and finally June 2.

Via: The Hill

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Obama wins trade victory in the Senate

President Obama won a big victory for his trade agenda Friday with the Senate’s approval of fast-track legislation that could make it easier for him to complete a wide-ranging trade deal that would include 11 Pacific Rim nations.

A coalition of 48 Senate Republicans and 14 Democrats voted for Trade Promotion Authority late Friday, sending the legislation to a difficult fight in the House, where it faces more entrenched opposition from Democrats.

The Senate coalition fought off several attempts by opponents to undermine the legislation, defeating amendments that were politically popular but potentially poisonous to Obama’s bid to secure the trade deal.

“This is an important bill, likely the most important bill we will pass this year. It’s important to President Obama,” Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee and primary author of the bill, said at the close of debate.

TPA’s fast-track provisions would allow Congress, under strict timelines, to consider trade deals with a simple up-or-down vote without any amendments or requirements of a Senate super-majority to end debate. That would help Obama complete the final details of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), with the other 11 nations, a bloc that represents about 40 percent of the global economy.

Via: Washington Post

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Conservatives Blame GOP Leaders For Not Stopping ‘Fundamental Transformation of America’

(CNSNews.com) –  Republicans are not keeping the campaign promise they made to voters in 2014 to halt President Obama’s “fundamental transformation of America,” conservative and Tea Party leaders charged in an open letter to Congress on Monday.

On April 28, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) cited fast-track trade legislation and a bill requiring congressional review of the administration’s nuclear deal with Iran as the major accomplishments of the GOP-led 114th Congress so far.

Earlier that month, Obama praised what he called “some outbreaks of bipartisanship and common sense in Congress” over Iran and trade. The president also said he was holding bipartisan talks with the Republican leadership on transportation infrastructure issues as well.

“To the extent the majority leader and the president are making nice, I’m happy. We need a lot more consensus in the federal government. There’s partisanship at every turn,” Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS) said Monday.

But the 50 conservative leaders who signed the Citizens’ Mandate in January reminded McConnell and the rest of the Republican leadership that voters who gave them a landslide victory last November have much higher expectations for them, such as ending executive branch overreach and restoring the constitutional balance of power.

“The November election was a repudiation of President Obama’s dramatic expansion of government power both through legislative and executive actions,” stated the Citizens’ Mandate, which also has a Facebook page.

The GOP’s clear mandate is to “end Obamacare; stop executive amnesty; hold the executive branch accountable for its abuses of power and its national security failures both foreign and domestic; and put the interests of the United States of America and Americans first.”

However, instead of wielding its power as a co-equal branch of government to stop illegal immigration during the first 132 days they controlled both houses of Congress, Republicans wound up funding Obama’s executive amnesty and jeopardizing national security by failing to address the security risks posed by illegal immigration, the letter pointed out.

Via: CNS News

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Senate fight looms as law allowing NSA to collect Americans’ phone data set to expire

A major supporter of the National Security Agency’s anti-terrorism surveillance program, which allows the bulk collection of Americans’ phone records, is pushing for an extension of the program, setting up a battle with critics who argue that Congress must fix the current law or let it expire.

"This has been a very important part of our effort to defend the homeland since 9/11," Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Sunday while defending the program in an interview on ABC's “This Week.” "We know that the terrorists overseas are trying to recruit people in our country to commit atrocities in our country."

McConnell, R-Ky., introduced a bill Thursday night that would temporarily renew the expiring provisions of the Patriot Act for two months.

The renewal would buy time for the Senate to debate, specifically, Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which authorizes the government to collect personal records without a warrant and has been the target of controversy since NSA contractor Edward Snowden revealed in 2013 that it was being used by the NSA to capture and retain millions of Americans’ personal phone records.  

The provisions are currently scheduled to sunset on June 1.

Meanwhile, the House on Wednesday passed the USA Freedom Act, a bipartisan bill lawmakers said would end the NSA’s ability to use Section 215 for that type of data collection. Instead, it would allow private telecom companies to keep the records. Federal law enforcement would have to get a court order proving a link to a specific criminal investigation to collect such phone record data, and must use specific search terms to get permission to pore through the information.

Via: Fox News

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McConnell vows ‘free-wheeling’ Senate under his leadership

Fresh off his resounding Republican primary victory Tuesday night, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell Thursday laid out a broad vision of what the Senate would look like under his control.

Bottom line, McConnell, wouldn’t run the way Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., runs it now, the Kentucky Republican told the center-right American Enterprise Institute.

‘A Senate majority under my leadership would break sharply from the practices of the Reid era in favor of a more free-wheeling approach to problem solving,’ McConnell said in a speech. ‘I would work to restore (the Senate’s) traditional role as a place where good ideas are generated, debated and voted upon. We’d fire up the committee process. We’d work longer days and weeks, using the clock to force consensus.’

And McConnell’s money shot: ‘In marked contrast to the Reid era, we would allow an open amendment process – ensuring senators on both sides a chance to weigh in on legislation and alleviating the frustration that inevitably results when they can’t.’

McConnell and Republicans believe the Senate is within their grasp this election year. They need a net gain of six seats in November to gain control of the chamber.

Last November, Reid and the Democratic-controlled Senate changed the chamber’s long-standing rules to strip the Republican minority of its filibuster power to block many presidential nominations, a move that makes it easier to confirmed President Barack Obama’s appointees but increased partisan tensions in an already acrimonious chamber.

Via: McClatchy

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Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/05/22/228196/mcconnell-vows-free-wheeling-senate.html?sp=/99/104/244/112/#storylink=cpy

GOP Establishment Reigns; Upstart Dems Shake Up Primaries

They call themselves the Tea Party, but for the loosely associated small-government groups that have upended Republican politics during the last five years, there was no cause for celebration when the results of Tuesday's primaries came in.  

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell -- who began this election cycle as a slow-moving target for grassroots conservatives -- highlighted the GOP establishment’s biggest round of victories yet during a primary season in which the Tea Party has repeatedly fallen short. 

McConnell’s win was expected, but his 60 percent-35 percent thrashing of challenger Matt Bevin in Kentucky was emblematic of the establishment’s resurgence within the party. 

Suffering anemic approval ratings and having to fend off millions of dollars in attack ads from outside spending groups, McConnell worked relentlessly to portray Bevin -- who created plenty of problems on his own -- in a negative light.  

After coasting to the nomination largely unscathed, McConnell will now build upon the conservative support he brought together in the heavily Republican state as takes on Democratic Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes in the general election.  

In the other marquee Republican matchup on Tuesday, establishment fears that a weak candidate would be nominated to run against Democrat Michelle Nunn in the Georgia Senate race proved unfounded.  

In a crowded contest that included a pair of marginal general election prospects, businessman David Perdue and U.S. Rep. Jack Kingston emerged as the top two contenders, who will square off against each other in a July runoff.  

Both men enjoy support from a broad range of Republicans in the state, and each is considered a strong opponent for Nunn, who has enjoyed surprisingly robust early poll numbers in hypothetical general election matchups.  

Via: Real Clear Politics

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Obama’s Praetorian Guards!

Our puppet dictator is not destroying our republic all by his lonesome.  He is executing the game plan designed by his puppeteers, and promoted and protected by the puppeteer-controlled media, but isn’t there more to this saga, than meets the eye?  Are you familiar with the term, ‘Praetorian Guard’?

The definition of ‘Praetorian’ is, ‘Venal; Corruptible’.  The definition of ‘Venal’ is, ‘Willing to sell one’s influence, especially in return for a bribe; open to bribery; mercenary’.  Combine ‘Praetorian’ with ‘Guard’, and we have a situation in which guards can be corrupted?  Are they corrupted for, or against, the people who elected them to office?

Who, pray tell, could be Praetorian Guards of our puppet dictator?  Could it be that Boehner and McConnell have sold their souls, and our rights and freedoms, to partner with other entrenched establishment elites atop both major political parties, to protect our puppet dictator?  Could Boehner and McConnell have been clandestinely and strategically placed into their positions of leadership, to advance the global elite puppeteers’ agenda against the United States of America, and freedom throughout the world?

Acting as a criminal profiler, one can connect the dots to see why certain things occur and other things don’t occur, to craft an understanding of what is truly happening beyond what we are allowed to see by the global elite puppeteers and their puppeteer-controlled media.  We have, what appears to be, a gutless GOP leadership that has become increasingly docile towards a renegade regime that has grown increasingly hostile against the U. S. citizen/taxpayer, our rights and freedoms, and our constitutional republic.  From a political perspective, this does not make sense, so don’t we need to think outside of the boxes in which the puppeteer-controlled media have confined our thinking?

Via: Canada Free Press

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Amnesty: The Next GOP Leadership Betrayal

House Republican leadership is preparing to betray the base. Again. To illustrate the magnitude of the sellout I was going to use a hypothetical analogy with Democrats and their base. Initially I was going to posit that Sen. Tim Kaine (D–Secular) had changed his mind about abortion.

House Republican leadership is preparing to betray the base. Again. To illustrate the magnitude of the sellout I was going to use a hypothetical analogy with Democrats and their base. Initially I was going to posit that Sen. Tim Kaine (D–Secular) had changed his mind about abortion.

For years Kaine has said that although he’s personally opposed to abortion, he is not willing to impose his beliefs on a ‘woman’s right to choose.’ Essentially confessing that his Catholic faith is not strong enough to get in the way of his political ambitions. (In his last campaign he became even more weaselly, saying he didn’t want to stand in the way of a woman exercising her “constitutional choices,” unless the choice involved a handgun.)

In my hypothetical Kaine would announce he had decided that what the Catholic Church teaches and the Bible says is the truth and he will no longer support any abortion unless it is to save the life of the mother. Kaine would also declare that he will no longer vote for any taxpayer dollars to be given to Planned Parenthood since both his beliefs and opinion polls show Americans don’t think tax money should pay for or help support abortion facilities.

It’s a great analogy but it has one problem: No one, but no one would believe it. The Democrat base worships at the altar of abortion. The analogy is too fantastic for even temporary suspension of disbelief. Brent Bozell, chairman of ForAmerica, put it nicely this week: “So what’s the difference between Boehner and Pelosi and McConnell and Reid? Answer: The Democratic leadership honors its promises. Republican leaders have abandoned theirs.”

Via: Canada Free Press

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Kristol Dismisses Filibuster ‘Dysfunction’: Real Problem is Why Senate Won’t Take Up House Bills

On This Week With George Stephanopoulos Sunday morning, Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol criticized Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-NV) so-called “nuclear option”— that eliminated the non-talking filibuster to prevent GOP senators from blocking judicial nominations—arguing that Reid had created the dysfunction he just changed the rules to prevent.

“I think we’re being too nice here,” Kristol said, referring to the “both sides are to blame” tenor of the conversation. “Harry Reid agreed with Mitch McConnell (R-KY) that this would not happen in this session. They actually negotiated something at the beginning of the session. So, he’s simply breaking his word because Republicans were not confirming every appellate court judge as quickly as the administration liked, and were holding up some executive branch appointees longer—”

“A lot of them,” Cokie Roberts corrected.

RELATED: MSNBC’s Kornacki on Hardball: GOP ‘Secretly Relieved’ Reid Went with Nuclear Option

“168 filibusters in the history of the country,” Donna Brazile said, “82 under President Obama.”

“A lot of those filibusters were because Harry Reid introduced the bill, filled the tree, as they say, with amendments, and invoked cloture, and it’s called a quote ‘filibuster,’” Kristol said. “Reid’s behavior as majority leader has been pretty amazing. The House routinely passes legislation the Senate simply doesn’t take up. It’s fine: bring it to the floor. If they want to filibuster, filibuster; if the Democrats have the votes to beat it, beat it. But they don’t even take up stuff that the House passes.”

“But there are more than 200 nominations sitting there not confirmed,” Roberts said. “That is dysfunctional, certainly.”

Watch the full clip below, via ABC News:

Via: Mediaite.com

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Sen. Harry Reid Gets Ready to Go Nuclear

"The American people believe Congress is broken," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said on the floor Thursday morning. "The American people believe that the Senate is broken. And I believe that the American people are right."

With that, the Nevada Democrat set in motion a fight over changing the Senate's filibuster rules that has been years in the making. There were roughly 67 senators on the floor for Reid's remarks, which is very rare for the Senate.

The move for a rule change comes after a series of Republican filibusters on Obama nominees to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. Reid said on the floor that he would like to see an up-or-down vote on nominations, not including the Supreme Court. Currently, those nominees need to receive 60 votes in order to cut off debate and move to the up-or-down vote.

The Senate, Reid said, has "wasted hours and wasted days between filibusters." The need for change, he said, "is so, so very obvious." He added, "It's time to change the Senate before the institution becomes obsolete."

Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, second in command in the Republican Senate leadership, has already tweeted to call Reid's floor speech a "temper tantrum." Reid and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell spoke for about three minutes before Reid spoke.

McConnell came to the floor following Reid's speech, calling the rules debate a failed distraction from Obamacare. "This strategy of distract, distract, distract is getting old," he said. The filibuster challenge reminds Americans, McConnell said, of the Democrats "power grab" on Obamacare. Democrats, McConnell said, have attempted to "cook up a fake fight over judges."

The Kentucky Republican managed to squeeze in a joke at the expense of President Obama: "If you like the rules of the Senate, you can keep them!"

Via: National Journal

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Deal to avoid another government shutdown struggling in Senate

WASHINGTON -- The congressional committee that is trying to negotiate a deal to prevent the next government shutdown has run into a roadblock: Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell.

McConnell, the GOP minority leader, made the trek across the Capitol on Tuesday to tell a private session of House Republicans that his preference is not to give in when it comes to easing up on the mandatory budget cuts that are set to take effect Jan. 15.

“I wish them well,” McConnell said about the bipartisan House-Senate committee trying to craft a deal. “I hope they’ll comply with the law.”

McConnell’s foray into the budget talks come as the Kentucky senator is heading toward a tough reelection battle in the Bluegrass State where he faces not only a Democrat candidate, but a tea party-styled Republican challenging him from the right.

PHOTOS: 2013's memorable political moments

Congress is facing another shutdown threat when money to fund the government runs out Jan. 15. At that time, the next round of so-called sequester cuts are set to slice across government departments, imposed by Congress as part of an earlier failed attempt to force a budget compromise.

Finding bipartisan agreement this time has been as tough as ever. Lawmakers from both parties increasingly view those sequester cuts as a bad idea, but the divisions inside the GOP have deepened.

Fiscal conservatives want to preserve the sequester cuts as their biggest trophy from the last several years of politically bruising fights with Democrats and the White House. But the party’s defense hawks, including Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), want to undo the Pentagon reductions, saying the cuts would decimate the Defense Department.

McConnell’s suggestion for keeping the top-line spending on par with the sequester cuts is not a recipe for compromise with Democrats. His proposal would essentially require shifting the reductions away from the Pentagon and onto other government programs, something Democrats have resisted as they push for new tax revenue by closing loopholes.

“That’s not where the American people are,” said Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), who is leading the bipartisan budget committee with Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) “They want us to solve the sequester issue. They don’t want the government to shut down again.”

The committee of House and Senate lawmakers has largely moved its work to the backrooms, with no public meetings scheduled. Top leaders face a Dec. 13 deadline to cut a deal

Via: Chicago Tribune

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PALIN: PRIMARY REPUBLICANS WHO WON'T FIGHT OBAMA'S TRANSFORMATION OF AMERICA

On Thursday, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin said lawmakers in Congress who do not oppose the fundamental transformation of America need to be primaried. 

When asked on The Kelly File on Thursday if she would support primary challengers to Senators Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Lamar Alexander (R-TN), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), and Thad Cochran (R-MS), Palin noted they were part of the "status quo" and said she would be looking very closely at their challengers.

"I've been saying for years that robust competitive primaries make for a better political system," Palin said. "It makes people work harder and express more articulately what their record is and what their intentions for our country is."

Palin said that those like Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Mike Lee (R-UT) "and a whole lot of other Americans see that we are taxed enough already."

Palin noted that is the "acronym for the Tea Party movement, we are taxed enough already and we believe that the constitution, that's the blueprint that leads us towards a more perfect union and will fight very strong for that. "

"So if the GOP is standing strong on the planks and the platform that represent everything that I just mentioned, if we stand united, well, then we won't lose the House, and we could even win back the Senate," she continued.

Palin said the the enemy of "America's economic freedom is this fundamental transformation of America." She emphasized that those who do not intend to "stop this fundamental transformation and stripping away of our economic freedom" and those who "can't stand strong to defend our republic, to defend our constitution" needed to be primaried.

Via: Breitbart

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Mitch McConnell defends deal, slams Obamacare tactics

McConnell says his ability to cut a deal wasn’t hamstrung by his campaign. | John Shinkle/POLITICO

At the end of the day, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell says he had no good option in the 16-day government shutdown fight.

House Speaker John Boehner’s strategy collapsed. Ted Cruz’s push to use a shutdown to defund Obamacare was “not a smart play” and a “tactical error,” he said. And the country was staring at the threat of a prolonged shutdown and a potentially disastrous default on a nearly $17 trillion national debt.

Using a football analogy, McConnell said he got the ball on his own two-yard-line with a “shaky” offensive line and had to cut a last-ditch deal with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to end the crisis, no matter how unappealing to many in his party. Despite acting as a chief deal-maker in recent years during government crises, it was unclear the role McConnell would play until the final days of the bitter fight.

(WATCH: Who won the shutdown? Top 5 quotes)

“Given the card I was dealt at that point, what I had hoped to have achieved was to punt the ball to a better place on the field without raising taxes or busting the [spending] caps,” McConnell told POLITICO in a phone interview Thursday.

Via: Politico

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Pelosi on pork project: ‘What difference does it make?’

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi Thursday said she can’t answer for why pork-barrel items snuck into the debt and spending bill that passed Congress late Thursday, but said the press should stop focusing on that and instead look at the broader debt fight.

“What difference does it make?” Mrs. Pelosi said when she was asked repeatedly about the items, which include a $174,000 payment to the widow of the late multimillionaire Sen. Frank Lautenberg and a $2 billion maximum price increase on a dam project on the Ohio River that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell had supported as an earmark in previous years.

The House Democratic leader said there were other reasons to be upset with the bill, including that it doesn’t spend as much as she wanted. But she said focusing on pork projects was missing the fight.

“If you want to have an objection to the bill, there are bigger things,” she said.

Via: Washington Times

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