"Hours after the Senate balked at reauthorizing the bulk collection of U.S. telephone records, the National Security Agency began shutting down..."

"... a controversial program Saturday that senior intelligence and law enforcement officials say is vital to track terrorists in the United States."

That's the Senate, working according to plan � balking at bulk � acting through inaction.

Rand Paul on ending the bulk collection of phone records but keeping the NSA.

He impressed me in this section of an interview this morning on "Meet the Press."



From the transcript:

... I would have the NSA target their activities more and more towards our enemies. I think if you are not spending so much time and money collecting the information of innocent Americans, maybe could have have spent more time knowing one of the Tsarnaev boys, one of the Boston bombers, had gone back to Chechnya. We didn't know that even though we had been tipped off by the Russians, we had communicated, we had interviewed him and still didn't know that. Same with the recent jihadist from Phoenix that traveled to Texas and the shooting in Garland. We knew him. We had investigated him, we had put him in jail. I want to spend more time on people we have suspicion of and we have probable cause and less time on innocent Americans. It distracts us from the job of getting terrorists.

"The bags of Kraft marshmallows looked innocent enough. But a meat injector was also found in the car."

"After searching the Internet, Chief Jeffries realized that the marshmallows probably had been infused with the marijuana butter and heat-sealed into their bags.... Across the country, law enforcement agencies long accustomed to seizures of bagged, smokable marijuana are now wrestling with a surge in marijuana-infused snacks and confections transported illegally across state lines for resale."

One detail from "Wisconsin's Shame": that tipped-off reporter.

David French's National Review article � "Wisconsin�s Shame: 'I Thought It Was a Home Invasion'" � has attracted a lot of attention, but M.D. Kittle of Wisconsin Watchdog focuses on one detail. Cindy Archer "looked outside and saw a person who appeared to be a reporter. Someone had tipped him off." Kittle writes:

But Archer�s suspicion that a reporter was present was apparently right � and indicates that secrecy is a tactic rather than a principle: a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article published on the day of the raid, Sept. 14, 2011, indicates that a Journal Sentinel reporter arrived in time to see �about a dozen law enforcement officers, including FBI agents� raid Archer�s home....

�Around 9 a.m., a reporter saw four FBI agents � two of them wearing latex gloves � talking in Archer�s backyard before going into her house. Later, one removed a large box and put it in the trunk of an FBI car. They left about 10 a.m,� the Journal Sentinel story reported....

The secrecy of the John Doe investigation is supposed to protect those who may have done nothing illegal, and Archer has never been charged, yet her name was in the newspaper the day of the raid and she was forbidden to talk about it. As French put it in his article:
Click for more �

"Supreme Court respects Fourth Amendment, protecting meth heads."

The headline at Kos.

Yes, this one breaks down mostly as you'd expect, if you follow the Court on these matters.  Justice Ginsburg wrote the opinion of the Court, including the Chief Justice and Justices Scalia, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan.  Yes, they acknowledge, officers can do additional tasks which are required for their safety, or which don't prolong the stop, but that's where the line is drawn:

Traffic stops are �especially fraught with danger to police officers,� so an officer may need to take certain negligibly burdensome precautions in order to complete his mission safely. On-scene investigation into other crimes, however, detours from that mission. So too do safety precautions taken in order to facilitate such detours. Thus, even assuming that the imposition here was no more intrusive than the exit order in Mimms, the dog sniff could not be justified on the same basis. Highway and officer safety are interests different in kind from the Government�s endeavor to detect crime in general or drug trafficking in particular.

But what if they do that search really really quickly, asks Eric Holder? No!, responds the Court....

There are 3 dissenters: Kennedy, Thomas, and Alito.

"Cindy Archer, one of the lead architects of Wisconsin�s Act 10... was jolted awake by yelling, loud pounding at the door, and her dogs� frantic barking."

"The entire house � the windows and walls � was shaking. She looked outside to see up to a dozen police officers, yelling to open the door. They were carrying a battering ram. She wasn�t dressed, but she started to run toward the door, her body in full view of the police. Some yelled at her to grab some clothes, others yelled for her to open the door. 'I was so afraid,' she says. 'I did not know what to do.'... It was indeed a home invasion, but the people who were pouring in were Wisconsin law-enforcement officers. Armed, uniformed police swarmed into the house. Plainclothes investigators cornered her and her newly awakened family. Soon, state officials were seizing the family�s personal property, including each person�s computer and smartphone, filled with the most intimate family information...."

From "Wisconsin�s Shame: 'I Thought It Was a Home Invasion.'"