05/21/15 – Norman Singleton – The Scott Horton Show

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All right, you guys, welcome back to the show.
First up today is Norm Singleton from the Campaign for Liberty, formerly on Ron Paul's staff, Congressman Ron Paul's congressional staff for many years, now at the Campaign for Liberty.
Hey, Norm, how are you?
I'm doing all right.
How are you?
I'm doing great.
Hey, man, it's good to talk to you again.
It's been a long time.
Yeah, it has.
It's good to talk to you and hope all your listeners are doing well.
Yeah, they're great.
Don't worry about them.
Hey, listen, so you wrote a bunch of great stuff, and I want to talk to you all about that, but we've got to start with yesterday was Senator Rand Paul's best day, if you ask me.
You may know I've been kind of critical of him in the past, to say the least.
So yesterday he did this thing that was sort of kind of filibuster, but not really.
He went on for hours, and all against the Patriot Act, and not just against the Patriot Act and focusing on Section 215, which is important, but he also was certainly bringing up Executive Order 12333, and I think he must have probably been also bringing up FISA Amendments Act 702, although I didn't see that part.
But he's basically taking on the entire pseudo-legality of the mass surveillance state in America.
It was a pretty good show on C-SPAN 2 yesterday.
And so I guess, first of all, could you just clarify for us why exactly that wasn't a filibuster?
It wasn't the reauthorization that he was preventing from getting through.
What was it that he was doing exactly?
What it was, was the House is currently on Trade Promotion Authority, which is what you and I might remember as Fast Track, which is where they basically say, oh, the President gets this authority to negotiate a trade deal in the Senate, and the House have to vote up or down on it.
They can't amend it.
And so it's somewhat controversial because there's attempts to add amendments dealing with currency manipulation, for example, because some members think that some other countries are manipulating their currency, whereas our Federal Reserve never manipulates currency.
Janet Yellen does not do that.
That's why she's fully comfortable with an audit, because she has nothing to hide.
Because if you have nothing to fear, Scott, remember, if you have nothing to fear, you have nothing to hide.
So what Senator Paul did yesterday was, during debate on that, he took to the floor and basically took from, I think, 1.20 to 11.14 of the debate time on that.
It wasn't during the debate on Section 215 and the other expired provisions, extensions, but it did delay the time on TPA.
And by doing that, he did eat into the time that they will have on Patriot Act reform.
And so it did throw a monkey wrench into the Senate for the week.
It just wasn't exactly procedurally where the bill that he was actually talking about was being considered yet.
And I think that's where the confusion was.
But in terms of holding up the Senate, which is, of course, the issue in a filibuster, it did achieve that.
And most importantly, it did focus at least the politically aware and those of us who are concerned about these issues.
It refocused our attention on these important issues.
And I think hopefully brought to light not just a lot about what they're doing, but about some of the flaws in the constructive alternative proposals that have been floated out there, particularly the USA Freedom Act.
All right.
Well, we'll get to that in just a second.
But I wanted to point out, too, that he was also talking about other parts of the Patriot Act besides the surveillance, talking about the sneak and peek warrant.
And, you know, I forget if he got in the library records and all that kind of stuff.
But anyway, certainly was talking about the sneak and peek and the rest of the Patriot Act.
So but but now that's not up for sunset, is it?
No, no, it's not.
It's mostly it's only it's 215.
I think the so-called lone wolf provision and one other provision are up for are up for sunset.
OK.
And then so now.
All right.
So that makes sense.
So he's basically he's coming up the works in the procedure.
And then so the you're saying, I guess, and I read this, that the house is running out of time.
They basically don't have time to reauthorize.
Wait.
So how is his speech in the Senate screwing up the house?
That's where I thought I'd screw up the house.
I'm sorry.
If I said how I meant the Senate, the House passed the.
USA Freedom Act last week and they sent it to the Senate, the 215 expires on June 1st, but next week is Memorial Day and the House and Senate are both scheduled to be out of town.
So basically what Senator Paul is doing is forcing the Senate to work through the weekend, work maybe into next week, depending on how the next 48 to 72 hours go.
And anyone who knows anything about the House and Senate knows that they really don't like to cancel their recesses.
And I mean, if you call it work, you probably don't.
But they don't like even doing whatever it is you call it.
Yeah.
And what for the House?
Boehner has said that he is going to adjourn the House today after votes.
In fact, they may have they may have already be on their last votes of the week.
And he's not intending to call them back because he wants the Senate to pass his phony reform bill.
So it really could throw a big monkey wrench into this.
And it's possible that the end result could be one that actually results in our in our favor.
If they don't kill 215 outright or if it if they don't get a deal by June 1st, at that point, the they don't get a deal by June 1st and 215 expires and they have to keep on working on this.
At that point, sort of the the the landscape changes because now you're looking at coming back and putting something into law that that was there as opposed to just expanding something that was already that had been in law.
And that that's just it's just very different and very much very easier to block something that is already has already been killed from coming back than it is to stop something that's already in there from being expired.
But now, so if McConnell moves to go ahead and reauthorize it and make some kind of deal before June 1st, has Paul said that he will at that point then filibuster and he hasn't said that specifically, but he has said that he will do everything in his power because you're saying it's still open.
I mean, that could still happen.
Yeah, I mean, we don't know what's going to happen when they actually move to the to the to the bill itself.
And even without a without a without a filibuster, all Senator Paul or any other civil libertarian senator has to do is.
At this point is just say we're going to take as much we're going to take all the time because under Senate rules, there's like 30 hours after the first closer motion and that, you know, another 30.
I mean, a senator can really drag things out by just denying unanimous consent and then by design.
All right.
Now, I'm sorry.
Hold it right there.
We'll be right back with Norm Singleton from the Campaign for Liberty.
Hey, I'll sky here.
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Hi, guys.
Welcome back.
I'm Scott.
It's my show, The Scott Horton Show.
I'm talking with Norm.
Norm Singleton from the Campaign for Liberty.
And we're talking about Ron Paul's pseudo sort of kind of filibuster thing.
Ten or twelve or so hour long speech, ten hour speech he gave yesterday against the Patriot Act.
And I think, you know what, I'll just go ahead and comment.
Norm, in case you might agree and know somebody who knows somebody kind of thing.
And I would point out that Rand is at his best when he's attacking the right from the right unapologetically, as opposed to, say, for example, pandering before them.
And really accusing all of the other Republican candidates and their pro-government position on all of these things as being very big government liberal intrusiveness.
And it's the same argument for foreign policy, too, that he could, it seems to me, argue quite clearly that, you know what, it's true.
I'm not a right wing conservative Republican, but I'm not some rhino.
That's Jeb Bush.
That's the liberal Republican.
I'm the libertarian.
The liberal Republican and the rest of you so-called conservatives seem to be for everything.
Well, I'm against it all.
I just want peace and the Bill of Rights and an end to the bailouts.
And just make that case that they're all the bunch of rhinos for being for all these big government liberal policies that make them essentially indistinguishable from Hillary Clinton.
And then that way he doesn't have to flip-flop all around pandering and changing his story depending on who he's talking to and trying to please everybody.
He could just go ahead and fight for liberty in more of a uniform kind of a way and just look at it.
I mean, his two greatest moments are opposing drones, sort of, kind of, that was a weird thing, but more or less, given his great Brennan filibuster on drones.
And then this thing with the Patriot Act where he's taking a hell no, this is our line in the sand, and we demand our Bill of Rights kind of a position.
And that's his strong suit, not pandering and saying, no, look at me.
I swear I'm just as bad as the rest of you guys when it comes to Iran and Palestine and everything else like that.
But anyway, that's just my overly long take.
But it was really great what he did yesterday.
And as you're saying, procedurally, it seemed to have really worked, at least so far, in terms of gumming up the works and running out the clock on the reauthorization of the Patriot Act.
Which, if that's really true, then that's heroic right there.
That's not just a speech.
That is throwing a real monkey wrench into the works of the surveillance state there.
So good times, man.
I'll celebrate stuff like that for sure.
It is.
And apparently, I just saw that, for those confused as to what the point of doing it yesterday was, is that by going till close to midnight, he outlasted Senate leadership.
So when he yielded back time, there was no one there to file any cloture petitions on trade promotion, any Patriot Act-related legislature.
The other thing they have to do is highway funding, because who will build the roads?
And so it looks like the earliest they can start debate is Saturday, which pushes them up right into the Memorial Day holiday.
And at this point, they're going to be scrambling, I bet, to see if they can get the votes to pass the USA Freedom Act.
Because one thing that it did is some of the USA Freedom Act supporters are now talking about wanting to work to strengthen it.
There are some amendments that were not allowed in order on the House floor or in the House committee that were actually worth supporting, offered by Thomas Massey of Kentucky on the House floor.
And the same amendment was tried to be offered by Zoe Lofgren of California, who is a liberal Democrat, but she's a true civil libertarian, unlike, unfortunately, some in the Democratic caucus.
And Ted Poe of Texas, who is a staunch conservative Republican, but he is also a constitutionalist, has tendencies, and he recognizes that mass surveillance is not necessary for our safety and it is a danger to our liberty.
But these were blocked in the House because the only way that the Judiciary Committee was able to get an agreement from leadership to bring up any version of the USA Freedom was to have the Intelligence Committee bless the bill before it was even considered in the committee, which I have never heard of that happening before.
And the Intelligence Committee is a committee where you don't get on it unless you're interested in preserving the ability of the intelligence agencies, so-called intelligence agencies, because they're really not that bright to deserve the name intelligence agencies, to snoop on us.
And the chairman of the committee actually referred to Representative Justin Amash as Al-Qaeda's best friend in Congress.
That gives you the idea of the type of people that John Boehner was saying that before any pro-civil liberties, so-called pro-civil liberties legislation moves out of Judiciary Committee, you have to get this guy's support, someone who thinks that Justin Amash is Al-Qaeda's best friend because Representative Amash actually cares about the Fourth Amendment.
So hopefully, at the very least, I think that we could get out of this is some real teeth put in to this.
But even that, at this point, after the second court decision, which I know you've discussed with Marcy Wheeler, that said that 215 didn't authorize the metadata programs, even that would be, at best, a good step forward, but it wouldn't be complete.
I mean, we should really not be satisfied with anything but getting rid of 215 right now, and that should continue to be our long-term goal.
Right.
And our short-term goal.
Do you worry that the USA Freedom Act will end up kind of, even though it's not much of a reform, it'll take the wind out of the sails of the push for real abolition of this?
You know, this is another good thing about what's happened yesterday, is the fact that people like us are now talking about that question, and more people are listening to that question, thanks to Senator Paul's efforts yesterday, because I think he really did a wonderful job of highlighting the flaws in USA Freedom.
And he put a few people on kind of the defensive who had been pushing USA Freedom as the solution to all their problems, including the senator from your state, Senator Cruz.
While you, I'm sure, have some disagreements with Senator Cruz on a few issues, he's not been horrible on NSA surveillance, but unfortunately, he is buying into the line that we don't need to get rid of 215, we need to pass the USA Freedom Act.
And I think that because of Rand's filibuster, or talk-a-thon, or whatever people want to call it, and because of the efforts of Campaign for Liberty, it is actually, I think he's moving more in the direction of recognizing that USA Freedom, as passed in the House, needs a little work.
And he may eventually even come around to saying just scrap 215 altogether.
And also, I don't know if you saw it, Scott, but Senator Cruz made a point of recognizing not just Senator Paul for his efforts against the surveillance state, but of acknowledging that Senator Paul's father, for years, was the leading voice in Congress against the surveillance state.
And I know that you, like myself, are a huge fan of Senator Paul's father, the wonderful Dr. Ron Paul.
And it was nice to see that Senator Cruz took time to acknowledge all the great work that Ron Paul has done and continues to do in educating and mobilizing the American people about the dangers to our liberties.
Yeah, absolutely.
He's been 100% perfect on all these issues for – ever since coming back in 1997.
And, of course, I know you've seen – I don't know if people have seen the clip of Ron Paul in 1984 talking about federal databases of all the American people and all the implications for our privacy back then.
Oh yeah.
And his farewell speech.
Man, those drums mean we've got to go.
Thanks, Norm.
Great interview, man.
I really appreciate it, and very happy to talk to you again.
Thank you.
All right, everybody.
That's the great Norm Singleton.
He's at the Campaign for Liberty.
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