Everybody in DC Except Rand Paul Knew About ‘Verizongate’

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Rand Paul hand in mouth

It seems like everybody in Washington D.C. except Rand Paul knew about “VerizonGate”, which Congress says has been going on for over seven years.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) released an outraged statement in response to “new shocking revelation” of the “NSA extensive seizure and surveillance” of Americans’ Verizon phone records: “If the President and Congress would obey the Fourth Amendment we all swore to uphold, this new shocking revelation that the government is now spying on citizens’ phone data en masse would never have happened.”

Yes, it’s “shocking” to some, but not to anyone who actually works in DC, and certainly not to Congress, since Congress knew about it for the last seven years.

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Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) said that they have been kept informed under the law and that the surveillance is legal. Chambliss added that the court order lasts three months and was a regular renewal of the legal authority, which has been going on for seven years.

Speaker John Boehner pretended not to know anything about it in order to play the Darrell Issa Scandal Monger Game, but of course, he voted to reauthorize the Patriot Act several times, calling it “a critical tool” to protect the American people.

David Corn busted that little game up, along with ABC, by pointing out that Congress was briefed on the matter and hello, small but critical detail: Bush never got permission to spy on Americans, while the Obama administration is working “within an existing legal framework to get subpoenas, warrants, and orders to access these records.”

The Speaker had to begrudgingly admit that Congress had authorized it. Jason Easley broke it down earlier:

President Obama and the White House were not going rogue. The Senate had been briefed on, and has known about the program for years. Glenn Greenwald’s big story has turned out to be nothing that wasn’t already known in Washington for years. A 2011 letter from the White House to Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) notes that members of Congress have been briefed on this program in multiple ways since 2009.

Don’t like those laws? Bernie Sanders directs you to Congress— where laws are made. Where has Rand Paul been? He’s kicked up quite a fuss over the Patriot Act in the past, so we can only hope that he’s at least read parts of it.

Senator Paul tweeted in reaction to the “news” on Thursday:

(Speaking of the NDAA, Libertarians like Paul claimed that Obama had asked for the language to detain American citizens when in fact, Obama had requested the opposite.)

Is it “1984 yet”? Things were a lot worse under Bush, when “Big Brother” actually listened to our phone calls without a warrant, so “yet” is a bit misleading. Under “Verizongate”, the government is collecting records. This is all classified information, so we don’t know what they are looking for or using the information for. They do have to demonstrate a need for the information, and supposedly it’s used on suspected terrorists. It’s not data mining, they tell us, they have to have a need before using it. At any rate, it does not include recordings of conversations, they have to get a court order for surveillance of actual conversations.

It is, however, an egregious but currently legal violation of our privacy. This fact should open the door for real discussion about the ever expanding powers of the executive branch, and Congress’ continual, relentless erosion of civil liberties.

Rand Paul claims to stand for civil liberties (except when it comes to closing Gitmo), but now he’s acting all shocked and outraged over the “news” that should not be news to him at all, if he’s really doing his job. He voted on the bill, so he really ought to know what’s in it. If Paul really has the vapors over this “new shocking revelation”, what did he think of Bush’s warrantless wiretapping and more importantly, why didn’t he read the bill? Is there some reason why Rand Paul is the last to know, if in fact he did not know?

The truth is that Republicans were hoping to use “Verizongate” to add to their list of fictional Obama scandals, until the press and the White House reminded them that they had voted for the very Patriot Act that authorized said Verizongate, and made it legal.

Reboot scandal generator. But, outrage!

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