More Allegiance to Liberals, ‘Alinksy-Like Tactics’ Cruz, Rand Spar with Rubio on NSA, Immigration
By Ian Hanchett. Republican presidential candidates Texas Senator Sen. Ted Cruz and Kentucky Senator Sen. Rand Paul sparred with fellow candidate Florida Senator Sen. Marco Rubio on the NSA and immigration during CNN’s prime GOP presidential debate.
Cruz said that the USA Freedom Act, “ended the federal government’s bulk collection of phone medadata of millions of law-abiding citizens. But number two, and the second half of it that is critical, it strengthened the tools of national security and law enforcement to go after terrorists. It gave us greater tools, and we are seeing those tools work right now in San Bernardino. And in particular, what it did, is the prior program only covered a relatively narrow slice of phone calls. When you had a terrorist, you could only search a relatively narrow slice of numbers, primarily landlines. The USA Freedom Act expands that, so now we have cell phones, now we have Internet phones, now we have the phones that terrorists are likely to use, and the focus of law enforcement is on targeting the bad guys. You know, what the Obama administration keeps getting wrong, is whenever anything bad happens they focus on law-abiding citizens, instead of focusing on the bad guys. We need to focus on radical Islamic terrorists, and we need to stop them before they carry out acts of terror.”
Rubio responded that Cruz is wrong, along with others who voted for the act. He added, “This is radical jihadist group that is increasingly sophisticated, and its ability, for example to radicalize American citizens, and its inability to exploit loopholes in our legal immigration system. It’s ability to capture to hold territory in the Middle East, as I outlined earlier, in multiple countries. This is not just the most capable, it is the most sophisticated terror threat we have ever faced. We are now at a time where we need more tools, not less tools. And that tool we lost, the metadata program, was a valuable tool that we no longer have at our disposal.”
Cruz answered, “I would note that Marco knows what he’s what he’s saying isn’t true. You know, Mark Levin wrote a column last week that says that the attack ads his super PAC is running that are saying the same thing, that they are knowingly false, and they are in fact Alinsky-like attacks like Barack Obama.” (Read more from “More Allegiance to Liberals, ‘Alinksy-Like Tactics’ Cruz, Rand Spar with Rubio on NSA, Immigration” HERE)
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AP FACT CHECK: Republican Debaters Go Astray
By Associated Press. A look at some of the claims in the latest Republican presidential debate and how they compare with the facts:
JEB BUSH: “We need to embed our troops in the Iraqi military.”
THE FACTS: The U.S. is already doing that.
U.S. special forces are working side by side with Iraqi forces in the fight against Islamic State militants and American military advisers and trainers are working with Iraqi troops in various locations. To be sure, Bush has called for an intensification of the military effort in a variety of ways, but debate viewers would not know from his comment that U.S. troops are already operating with Iraqi and Kurdish forces. (Read more from “AP FACT CHECK: Republican Debaters Go Astray” HERE)
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