U.S. Senate adjourns after failing to take any action to reform or renew the unPatriot Act

Well, that was real­ly some­thing.

Just min­utes ago, the Unit­ed States Sen­ate adjourned for an extend­ed Memo­r­i­al Day week­end recess after hav­ing failed to pass any leg­is­la­tion to reform or renew expir­ing pro­vi­sions of the (un)Patriot Act — which means that the Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Agency and Fed­er­al Bureau of Inves­ti­ga­tion will need to start wind­ing down their over­broad, uncon­sti­tu­tion­al sur­veil­lance operations.

By way of back­ground, three pro­vi­sions of the Unit­ing and Strength­en­ing Amer­i­ca by Pro­vid­ing Appro­pri­ate Tools Required to Inter­cept and Obstruct Ter­ror­ism (USA PATRIOT) Act of 2001 are expir­ing on June 1st. These are:

• The “library records pro­vi­sion”, cod­i­fied as Sec­tion 215;
• The “lone wolf pro­vi­sion”, cod­i­fied as Sec­tion 207;
• The “rov­ing wire­tap pro­vi­sion” cod­i­fied as Sec­tion 206.

The non-tem­po­rary sec­tions of the act are not expir­ing, but Amer­i­ca’s nation­al spy­ing appa­ra­tus is very alarmed at the prospect of los­ing some of its uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly-grant­ed pow­ers to spy on Amer­i­cans — and so is the Oba­ma White House, which has warned the Sen­ate not to “play chick­en” with Amer­i­ca’s security.

Of course, as Ben­jamin Franklin once said, Those who would give up essen­tial Lib­er­ty, to pur­chase a lit­tle tem­po­rary Safe­ty, deserve nei­ther Lib­er­ty nor Safety.

The White House want­ed the Sen­ate to fol­low the House in vot­ing for the USA Free­dom Act, a bill that would reau­tho­rize some of the spy­ing pow­ers while sup­pos­ed­ly end­ing the bulk col­lec­tion of Amer­i­cans’ phone data.

The House passed this leg­is­la­tion a few days ago by an extreme­ly wide mar­gin, but top Repub­li­can Mitch McConnell, an NSA sym­pa­thiz­er, does­n’t like it.

McConnell allowed the bill to come up for a vote ear­li­er tonight, but he urged his fel­low Repub­li­cans to vote it down. And most did.

The final vote on whether to pro­ceed with con­sid­er­a­tion of H.R. 2048 (the USA Free­dom Act) was fifty-sev­en to forty-two, with one sen­a­tor not vot­ing.

The roll call from the Pacif­ic North­west was as follows:

Vot­ing Aye: Democ­rats Maria Cantwell and Pat­ty Mur­ray (WA), Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden (OR), Jon Tester (MT); Repub­li­cans Steve Daines (MT), Lisa Murkows­ki and Dan Sul­li­van (AK)

Vot­ing Nay: Repub­li­cans Mike Crapo and Jim Risch (ID)

After H.R. 2048 was blocked, Mitch McConnell called for a vote on S. 1357, leg­is­la­tion to sim­ply extend the afore­men­tioned pro­vi­sions for two months. This failed by an even big­ger mar­gin, with a major­i­ty of sen­a­tors car­ry­ing the day.

The final vote was forty-five to fifty-four (McConnell switched his vote to nay at the last minute so he could bring the bill back up again at a lat­er point).

The roll call from the Pacif­ic North­west was as follows:

Vot­ing Aye: Repub­li­cans Jim Risch (ID) and Dan Sul­li­van (AK)

Vot­ing Nay: Democ­rats Maria Cantwell and Pat­ty Mur­ray (WA), Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden (OR), Jon Tester (MT); Repub­li­cans Lisa Murkows­ki (AK), Steve Daines (MT), and Mike Crapo (ID)

Democ­rats Joe Don­nel­ly of Indi­ana and Bill Nel­son of Flori­da shame­ful­ly backed McConnel­l’s attempt to extend the expir­ing unPa­tri­ot Act pro­vi­sions for two months. How­ev­er, their votes were more than can­celed out by a num­ber of Repub­li­cans who sided with the rest of the Democ­rats, includ­ing the three shown above from the Pacif­ic North­west (Crapo, Daines, and Murkowski).

The oth­er Repub­li­cans who refused to vote to renew the unPa­tri­ot Act were Rand Paul of Ken­tucky (who must be get­ting on McConnel­l’s nerves), Ted Cruz of Texas, Jim Moran of Kansas, Cory Gard­ner of Col­orado, and Dean Heller of Nevada.

After McConnel­l’s S. 1357 was blocked, he asked unan­i­mous con­sent for an even short­er-term exten­sion, to June 8th. But his seat­mate Rand Paul of Ken­tucky object­ed. McConnell then tried sev­er­al more times to get suc­ces­sive­ly short­er exten­sions passed, but Sen­a­tors Wyden, Hein­rich, and Paul objected.

A frus­trat­ed McConnell then grum­bled for sev­er­al min­utes about not get­ting his way before hud­dling with his cir­cle and return­ing to the lectern to announce that he would not call any more votes for the time being.

McConnell plans to recon­vene the Sen­ate on Sun­day, May 31st, in an attempt to save Sec­tions 206, 207, and 215 from expiration.

Out­right expi­ra­tion would actu­al­ly be the best out­come, how­ev­er. The NSA and FBI sim­ply do not need the over­ly broad, Bill of Rights-infring­ing pow­ers con­tained with­in Sec­tions 206, 207, and 215.

McConnell will no doubt use the next week to try to get his cau­cus to line up behind him. But if he wants a uni­fied cau­cus going into Sun­day, he will have to agree to the terms of his seat­mate Rand Paul, who is pre­pared to con­tin­ue stand­ing in McConnel­l’s way unless he gets the oppor­tu­ni­ty to offer amend­ments aimed at stop­ping the nation’s spy agen­cies from run­ning roughshod over the Bill of Rights.