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If Chris Coons could join Rand Paul and Bernie Sanders to vote against the Patriot Act . . .

You gotta wonder what's up with John Carney?

It is more usual to focus of Presidents, like Bush or Obama, and blame them for the deterioration of civil liberties in this country, but the reality is that the US Congress has been a willing accomplice in the shredding of our individual rights.

Particularly John Carney.

Carney not only voted for the extension of the Patriot Act, he voted for CISPA and the NDAA with its provisions for indefinite detention of American citizens.  (Later Carney would vote for a purely symbolic amendment that had no chance of passing to strip indefinite detention out of the NDAA, but by that time the vote that mattered had already made it law.)

Does John Carney believe in American police state?  Seemingly.  At the very least he appears indifferent to the consequences of his votes.

Nemski at Delawareliberal rightly took Carney to task for the CISPA vote:
House Speaker Boehner rushed through the CISPA bill late Thursday and it passed.. And what could only be considered a major disappointment is that not only did John Carney vote with the Republicans in its passage,Carney voted to curtail our rights.
But, of course, the problem is that the Democrats seem to have no antidote to John Carney, no one willing to challenge him, no willingness to hold him to account at the ballot box.

And, if the past is any indication, Carney will continue to be a reliable vote for those who believe that security can only be achieved at the expense of individual liberty.  Here are a couple of the more important issues coming up in Congress that John Carney will undoubtedly vote against:

Three important FISA amendments designed to put some process back into "due process--
A bulk declassification bill that clears the backlog of inappropriately classified material for public release--
A cut in Pentagon missile defense programs--
A challenge to the sovereign immunity clause in warrantless wiretapping--
If you actually want a Congressman who will join Senator Chris Coons (I can't believe I'm saying this) in voting to restore our civil liberties, then you have to dump John Carney.

And you damn sure can't vote for Tom Kovach, whose position on "national security" is somewhere to the far right of even Carney.

No, if you really value civil liberties and expect the US Congress to take a role in protecting them, then you need to vote for


Comments

Anonymous said…
http://reason.com/24-7/2012/08/08/johnson-a-bigger-threat-to-obama-than-ro?nomobile=1
In case you wondered why Johnson won't be included in the debates. Either the D's or R's will lose out to him, therefore ... status quo.
kavips said…
Does John Carney believe in American police state?

no, but he did go to Dartmouth.
tom said…
And we know he doesn't believe in it because he told us so in a press release and/or taxpayer funded mailing, immediately after voting in favor of it.
NCSDad said…
http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/the-stakes-this-fall/
On the difference between BHO and GWB
Eric Dondero said…
If you oppose the Patriot Act, you favor illegal alien Saudi students overstaying their Visas here in the U.S. and looking up plans for dirty bombs on taxpayer-subsidized computers at the local public library.

The Patriot Act is a mixed bag; half is really good, the other is bad from a libertarian perspective.
tom said…
Wow! I never realized that prior to the Patriot Act our immigration laws had an exception for Saudi students studying bomb-making.

Could you elaborate on this a bit, Eric?

I am especially curious about which parts of the Patriot Act are really good from a libertarian perspective.
tom said…
hmmm. crickets...

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