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Senators, Representatives Moving Closer to Reigning in Unconstitutional NSA

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Photo Credit: Jim Lo Scalzo/EPAUdall: NSA close to unconstitutional

By Hadas Gold. Sen. Mark Udall said on Sunday the NSA program that monitors Americans’ phone calls is close to being “unconstitutional.”

“I would argue that it comes close to being unconstitutional, and there’s a better way to do this,” Colorado Democrat said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”

Udall said a new bill he recently introduced with Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) protects not just Americans, but the “biggest, baddest weapon we have,” the Bill of Rights.

“My bill, which I want to push as hard as I possibly can, would limit the ways in which the intelligence community accesses average Americans’, innocent Americans’, phone records. That’s the way to go forward,” Udall said. “That’s the way in which to protect not just our people but the Bill of Rights. The Bill of Rights is the biggest, baddest weapon we have.” Read more from this story HERE.

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Opponents of NSA surveillance emboldened by close House vote

By Brendan Sasso and Jennifer Martinez. A close vote in the House on National Security Agency surveillance has given privacy advocates new momentum in their quest to curtail the agency’s power.

Critics of the agency are reviewing their options and plotting their next move in an attempt to build on their surprisingly strong showing.

“The House took a shot across NSA’s bow, and the NSA noticed,” said Gregory Nojeim, a senior counsel for the Center for Democracy and Technology.

It’s a heady time for privacy advocates, who for years have been on the defensive against claims that tougher privacy standards would endanger national security and help terrorists.

“This was the closest vote I’ve ever seen post-9/11 in regard to reeling in the NSA apparatus,” said Amie Stepanovich, director of the Domestic Surveillance Project at the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC). “The numbers on this vote show there’s incredible interest in reforming these programs. I don’t think it matters that it didn’t pass.” Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: Getty ImagesWyden calls Fisa court ‘anachronistic’ as pressure builds on Senate to act

By Ed Pilkington. Pressure is building within the US Senate for an overhaul of the secret court that is supposed to act as a check on the National Security Agency’s executive power, with one prominent senator describing the judicial panel as “anachronistic” and outdated.

Ron Wyden, a Democratic senator for Oregon, said discussions were under way about how to reform the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance court, the body entrusted with providing oversight on the NSA and its metadata-collecting activities. He told C-Span’s Newsmaker programme on Sunday that the court, which was set up in 1978 under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (Fisa), was ill-equipped to deal with the massive digital dragnet of millions of Americans’ phone records developed by the NSA in recent years.

“In many particulars, the Fisa court is anachronistic – they are using processes that simply don’t fit the times,” Wyden said.

The Oregon senator is at the forefront of a growing chorus of political voices criticising the Fisa court for being biased towards the executive branch to the exclusion of all other positions. “It is the most one-sided legal process in the US, I don’t know of any other legal system or court that doesn’t highlight anything except one point of view – the executive point of view.”

Wyden added: “When that point of view also dominates the thinking of justices, you’ve got a fairly combustible situation on your hands.” Read more from this story HERE.

Ted Cruz, Rand Paul and Praying for Spiritual Revival In America

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Photo Credit: CBNBy David Brody. It was a sight to behold inside a conference ballroom at the downtown Marriott hotel in Des Moines, Iowa, as hundreds of Iowa pastors called out to God and prayed over two U.S. senators, both of whom seem interested in running for president of the United States.

Sen. Ted Cruz and Sen. Rand Paul came to Iowa Friday to speak at this Pastors and Pews event, organized by influential evangelical political operative David Lane. The Brody File got an up close look and access to the private event. We will be posting compelling video early next week. For now, we are releasing a few pictures from the event.

Ted Cruz, who received a warm greeting, spoke for about 30 minutes and then took questions from the audience. He outlined how he championed religious freedom cases ranging from the Ten Commandments to the Mojave Cross case. He touched on how to go about eliminating Obamacare; he called for abolishing the IRS (which received a standing ovation), and on the issue of marriage he said, “There’s no issue where we need to be more on our knees…we are facing an assault on marriage.”

On spiritual matters, he told the pastors that, “We are in a battle to turn this country around.” Later, in a one-on-one sit-down interview with The Brody File, he said this country is badly in need of spiritual revival (More on those comments coming Monday). He charged the pastors to step up and speak boldly about the issues facing our country today. He compared all of them to Esther, saying the biblical woman was put in a position of leadership, “for such a time as this.” Read more from this story HERE.

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Sen. Cruz and Paul Urge Conservative Christians to Get Involved

By Greg Richter. Two Republican senators who are widely considered to be viable contenders for a 2016 presidential run, were in Des Moines, Iowa, on Friday urging conservative Christians to get involved politically.

Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Rand Paul, R-Ky., spoke to a group of at least 400 evangelical pastors and their wives at the Iowa Renewal Project, with Cruz telling them “to hold party leaders accountable,” The Washington Post reports.

“Jesus reminds us what our goal should be when he proclaims: ‘Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God,'” Paul said. “This does not mean we never go to war. But it means we should do so reluctantly, and seek an end expeditiously.” Read more from this story HERE.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren is a Leftist But, Like Cruz, She’s Rubbing the Old Guard’s Feathers the Wrong Way

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Photo Credit: Tim Pierce/FlickrA freshman senator is causing a stir. Outspoken and impatient of the upper chamber’s clubby atmosphere, this career academic is driven by intellectual self-confidence and a willingness to be abrasive. The result is bipartisan offense and admiration.

Such an outline might depict Sen. Ted Cruz (Texas), the staunchly conservative freshman Republican, who is loathed by opponents and critics, loved by his base and makes his colleagues wary, to put it mildly. But it also describes Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.), a firmly liberal Democrat who in her first six months on Capitol Hill has displayed elbows just as sharp as those of her fellow freshman across the aisle.

Warren clashed last month with Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), chairman of the powerful Senate Finance Committee, over the nomination of Michael Froman to serve as U.S. Trade Representative.

Even though Froman sailed through the Finance Committee, Warren criticized him on the chamber floor after he declined to give her information about trade negotiations.

Froman’s backers say he would have been approved sooner if not for Warren’s opposition. Baucus made his displeasure known after the vote.

Read more from this story HERE.

Controversial Statements from Obama’s Choice for UN Ambassador (+video)

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Photo Credit: AFP/Getty ImagesAs the Senate prepares for confirmation hearings Wednesday to decide whether Samantha Power will be the next U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, there are some controversial criticisms of America from her past that may be called into question.

Power, a former journalist turned political activist, once connected some of the tactics in the U.S. war on terror to French military support for the Hutu militia, which killed 800,000 people in the Rwandan genocide. She also has called Americans “stingy on foreign aid,” declared that the U.S. should apologize for slavery, and even made indirect references comparing U.S. involvement in the world to that of Nazi Germany.

At a 2002 discussion of her book at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Power questioned the U.S. cooperation with other countries in the war on terror, saying “we’re about to partner with regimes that if they’re not committing genocide they are certainly committing systematic atrocities against their people.”

Power has already come under fire for a New Republic article in which she called for Americans to follow the lead of German leaders post-Holocaust and apologize for their war crimes:

“U.S. foreign policy has to be rethought. It needs not tweaking but overhauling. We need: a historical reckoning with crimes committed, sponsored, or permitted by the United States. This would entail restoring FOIA to its pre- Bush stature, opening the files, and acknowledging the force of a mantra we have spent the last decade promoting in Guatemala, South Africa, and Yugoslavia: A country has to look back before it can move forward. Instituting a doctrine of the mea culpa would enhance our credibility by showing that American decision-makers do not endorse the sins of their predecessors. When Willie Brandt went down on one knee in the Warsaw ghetto, his gesture was gratifying to World War II survivors, but it was also ennobling and cathartic for Germany.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Mark Levin Proposes Article V Constitutional Convention, Intended as End-Run Around Federal Tyranny

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[On his radio show this week, Mark] Levin previewed an argument under Article Five of the United States Constitution which expresses how the Constitution can be changed through the amendment process by using the traditional passage of a proposed amendment by two-thirds of both the House of Representatives and the Senate; then on to the several states for ratification. Once three-fourths of the states have ratified the proposed amendment, the approved Amendment becomes part of our United States Constitution.

What Levin also said was that the States could also propose a convention to add a specific amendment or reject a current amendment by calling an Amendment Convention. This convention would have no bearing on the existing framework of the Constitution, but would only affect the addition or subtraction of an amendment at hand.

Levin reported that under Article V of the Constitution, two-thirds of the several states could form a convention on their own through actions initiated through their own state legislatures. Once an amendment is successfully proposed, it could be ratified by approval of three-fourths of the legislatures of the several states, and then imparted into the Constitution.

The Founders placed this alternative method of amending the Constitution as an end-around the possible tyranny of an all-powerful federal government. The Founders knew the federal leviathan could never be completely trusted with policing itself and therefore gave ultimate authority to the states to make changes when they deemed it necessary.

Read more from this story HERE.

Amnesty Bill Opens US to Afghans

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Photo Credit: WNDThe text of the Senate’s immigration-reform bill contains a small section that increases by more than threefold the number of Afghans eligible for immigration to the U.S. under a special asylum program, WND has learned.

The legislation also further expands the previously strict qualifications for immigration from Afghanistan and allows for more family members to join admitted asylum seekers.

Page 450 of the 1,190 page immigration bill amends what is known as the 2009 Afghan Special Immigrant Visa Program. That program, set to expire this year, is now extended to 2018 by the immigration bill.

The special program previously allotted up to 1,500 visas for Afghans each year. The new immigration bill increases the visa quota to up to 5,000 Afghans per year, a difference detected by reading both the bill and the previous program.

The strict requirements of the previous program granted visas only to Afghan nationals employed by or on behalf of the U.S. government in Afghanistan on or after Oct. 7, 2001, for a period of one year or more. All applicants were required to demonstrate that they faced security threats due to their employment with the U.S.

Read more from this story HERE.

House Judiciary Chair Brings Sanity to Immigration Debate: No Citizenship, Just Greencards

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GoodlatteHouse Republicans insisted Sunday that they plan to change key elements of the Senate-passed immigration bill, signaling a protracted and rocky battle ahead despite one Democrat’s pronouncement that in the end the House will cave and pass the Senate bill anyway.

Republican Rep. Bob Goodlatte, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee who is playing a major role in the chamber’s consideration of immigration policy, on Sunday addressed what is perhaps at the heart of the impasse.

He said the House, which is drafting its own plan, cannot agree to a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants. Rather, he wants a “pathway to legalization” — in other words, allow some illegal immigrants a shot at a green card, but not full-fledged citizenship.

The pathway to citizenship, though, is a cornerstone of the Senate-passed bill, and any Democrat-backed plan. Increased border security, better enforcement of businesses and an expansion of the legal immigration system make up the rest of the bill.

Putting the issue in stark terms, Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., told “Fox News Sunday” that if Republicans strip the pathway to citizenship, “no Democrat” would support it.

Read more from this story HERE.

Amnesty Bill Passes Senate; Here are the RINO’s Who Voted for It (+video)

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Photo Credit: AFP/Getty

Photo Credit: AFP/Getty

By David Espo and Erica Werner. With a solemnity reserved for momentous occasions, the Senate passed historic legislation Thursday offering the priceless hope of citizenship to millions of immigrants living illegally in America’s shadows. The bill also promises a military-style effort to secure the long-porous border with Mexico.

The bipartisan vote was 68-32 on a measure that sits atop President Barack Obama’s second-term domestic agenda. But the bill’s prospects are highly uncertain in the Republican-controlled House, where party leaders are jockeying for position in advance of expected action next month.

Spectators in galleries that overlook the Senate floor watched expectantly as senators voted one by one from their desks. Some onlookers erupted in chants of “Yes, we can” after Vice President Joe Biden announced the vote result.

After three weeks of debate, there was no doubt about the outcome. Fourteen Republicans joined all 52 Democrats and two independents to support the bill.

In a written statement, Obama coupled praise for the Senate’s action with a plea for resolve by supporters as the House works on the issue. “Now is the time when opponents will try their hardest to pull this bipartisan effort apart so they can stop commonsense reform from becoming a reality. We cannot let that happen,” said the president, who was traveling in Africa. Read more from this story HERE.

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Senate passes massive immigration bill – Here are the 14 Republicans who voted for it

By Jason Howerton. The Senate has passed massive immigration legislation that will offer a pathway to citizenship to millions of illegal immigrants, while promising border security in the future.

The vote was 68-32, far more than the majority needed to send the measure to the House. Prospects there are not nearly as good and many conservatives are opposed.

Vice President Joe Biden presided, and senators cast their votes from their desks, both steps reserved for momentous votes.

The bill, a priority for President Barack Obama, would amount to the most sweeping changes in decades to the nation’s immigration laws. After three weeks of debate, there was no doubt about the outcome. Fourteen Republicans joined all 52 Democrats and two independents to support the bill.

Here are the 14 GOP senators who voted for the legislation:

Marco Rubio (Fla.)

Lamar Alexander (Tenn.)

Lisa Murkowski (Alaska)

Kelly Ayotte (N.H.)

Jeffrey Chiesa (N.J.)

Susan Collins (Maine)

Bob Corker (Tenn.)

Jeff Flake (Ariz.)

Lindsey Graham (S.C.)

Orrin Hatch (Utah)

Dean Heller (Nev.)

John Hoeven (N.D.)

Mark Kirk (Ill.)

John McCain (Ariz.)

Read more from this story HERE.

Democrat Markey Wins Kerry’s U.S. Senate Seat in Massachusetts Special Election

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Photo Credit: WEBN-TV

Photo Credit: WEBN-TV

Long-term Democratic U.S. Rep. Edward Markey beat out Republican newcomer Gabriel Gomez Tuesday in Massachusetts’ special election for John Kerry’s U.S. Senate seat.

Markey had an advantage of about 8 percentage points over Gomez with most precincts reporting late Tuesday, according to unofficial returns. He took to Twitter to thank voters after his victory.

“Thank you Massachusetts!” he tweeted. “I am deeply honored for the opportunity to serve you in the United States Senate.”

Gomez said he called Markey to congratulate him and wished him “nothing but the best.”

In a concession speech to supporters, Gomez said he was a better person as a result of the campaign and believed Markey would be a better senator having gone through the election.

Read more from this story HERE.

Allen West: I May Challenge Rubio for Senate Seat (+video)

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Photo Credit: YouTube

Photo Credit: YouTube

Former U.S. Rep. Allen West said Wednesday that he hasn’t ruled out a challenge to Florida Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, even as the former congressman acknowledged that it would be a difficult and expensive road to take.

West, a favorite of conservatives who lost his House seat in 2012, said he’d draw on his faith to make a decision on a future political contest.

“We’ll see what happens down the pike,” West said on WMAL’s “Morning at the Mall” radio show. “God will set my feet on the right path.”

Read more from this story HERE.