<story><title>Rand Paul wants to lead a Supreme Court challenge to Feds&apos; tracking of Americans</title><url>http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/06/09/paul-wants-to-lead-supreme-court-challenge-to-fed-tracking-americans-calls/</url><text></text></story><parent_chain><item><author>bpatrianakos</author><text>What amazes me is the hypocrisy in all this. The American people have basically known about this since about 2006. It&amp;#x27;s just that there wasn&amp;#x27;t as much proof or specifics but the media covered this and it was pretty much common knowledge that all phone calls and Internet activity were being watched. Of course that&amp;#x27;s not okay and I still get the current outrage. Totally understandable.&lt;p&gt;But then there are the senators... These guys approved this activity long ago and while not all of them knew the specifics the Intelligence Committe did. They were taken into meetings where no note taking tools or anything with a battery was allowed and briefed about this.&lt;p&gt;Now that this story breaks the senate gets their panties in a twist like this is news to them. They simultaneously defend it and condemn it.&lt;p&gt;It isn&amp;#x27;t fair to make such a blanket statement about the entire Senate, I know but what I&amp;#x27;m really getting at here is that what Rand Paul is doing doesn&amp;#x27;t strike me as sincere at all. It looks like a dog and pony show set up to make it look like someone gives a shit while they all keep getting briefed and voting for this stuff behind closed doors.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s like set up a bunch of PR stunts to make us feel warm and funny then do the opposite while no one is paying attention. On this issue I feel like its the guys trying to get attention the most who can be trusted the least.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>shpxnvz</author><text>While this is undoubtedly true for some senators, Paul seems like quite a poor choice of target for this criticism.&lt;p&gt;He has been very vocal in opposition of governmental encroachment on civil liberties during his senate term.  He was, in fact, the last senator left in opposition to the extension of the Patriot Act.</text></comment>
<story><title>Rand Paul wants to lead a Supreme Court challenge to Feds&apos; tracking of Americans</title><url>http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/06/09/paul-wants-to-lead-supreme-court-challenge-to-fed-tracking-americans-calls/</url><text></text></story><parent_chain><item><author>bpatrianakos</author><text>What amazes me is the hypocrisy in all this. The American people have basically known about this since about 2006. It&amp;#x27;s just that there wasn&amp;#x27;t as much proof or specifics but the media covered this and it was pretty much common knowledge that all phone calls and Internet activity were being watched. Of course that&amp;#x27;s not okay and I still get the current outrage. Totally understandable.&lt;p&gt;But then there are the senators... These guys approved this activity long ago and while not all of them knew the specifics the Intelligence Committe did. They were taken into meetings where no note taking tools or anything with a battery was allowed and briefed about this.&lt;p&gt;Now that this story breaks the senate gets their panties in a twist like this is news to them. They simultaneously defend it and condemn it.&lt;p&gt;It isn&amp;#x27;t fair to make such a blanket statement about the entire Senate, I know but what I&amp;#x27;m really getting at here is that what Rand Paul is doing doesn&amp;#x27;t strike me as sincere at all. It looks like a dog and pony show set up to make it look like someone gives a shit while they all keep getting briefed and voting for this stuff behind closed doors.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s like set up a bunch of PR stunts to make us feel warm and funny then do the opposite while no one is paying attention. On this issue I feel like its the guys trying to get attention the most who can be trusted the least.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>gwright</author><text>Hypocrisy?  I&amp;#x27;m not so sure.&lt;p&gt;It is really difficult to get a single person to change their mind about something. Even more difficult to get large groups to change their collective opinion.&lt;p&gt;Theoretical concerns about how a program &lt;i&gt;might&lt;/i&gt; be abused are much less convincing to people than actual abuses. It isn&amp;#x27;t surprising to me that people who discounted the possiblity of abuse in the past might now think differently about it (politicians and public citizens alike) when presented with actual overreach or even abuse.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t think that is an example of hypocrisy though.</text></comment>