Adam Schiff’s Anti-Bill of Rights Gambit

Earlier today, the left-leaning activist group DemandProgress tweeted the following:

The bill in question is the relatively milquetoast USA Freedom Act Reauthorization, a far weaker measure than a bill introduced earlier this year by Senators Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Steve Daines (R-MT). I’ll likely have more to say at a future date about the key differences between the bills but what’s remarkable here is how Schiff — who incompetently led the House Democrats botched impeachment effort against President Trump — has swooped in to try to kill even a modest PATRTIOT Act reform measure.

This is not his only pro-Surveillance State action this Congress, as I have previously noted, but his actions here speak to just how ingrained his support of clearly failed “War on Terror” era programs is at this point. They also speak to his refusal to recognize the primary jurisdiction of the House Judiciary Committee over domestic surveillance programs.

Late word is that the mark up of the Nadler bill has been postponed to a date as yet to be determined, but surveillance hawks like Schiff face a looming Ides of March expiration of the NSA’s now (allegedly) defunct PATRIOT Act Section 215 “call detail record” (CDR) program. Whether Schiff will get an assist from fellow surveillance hawk and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) in pushing through a sham reform measure that simply reauthorizes the program — as the Trump administration has requested — remains to be seen.