Monday on Fox News Channel’s “America’s Newsroom,” Sen. Rand Rand Paul (R-KY) declared a “huge victory,” even though the Senate moved forward the USA Freedom Act 77-17, to reform the National Security Agency on Sunday night, as Paul was able to temporarily allow a couple previsions to expire for a few days until the final vote on the reforms is taken.
Paul said, “The court has said the bulk collection of all our phone records is illegal. From here on out beginning this week the government will not collect your phone records in bulk. So I think that is a huge victory.”
He continued, “Here is the thing. I want more collection of records on terrorists. I just want less collection of innocent Americans. I think we sometimes get distracted by some records of innocent Americans that we’re not spending enough time actually following the potential jihadists in our country. The FBI said just this week they help. They don’t have enough people to follow the jihadists in our country. So here is what I would propose. I would hire 1000 new FBI agents to track these people. I would quit spending billions and billions of dollars collecting the records of innocent Americans. This is a big rebuke to the president. The president has been committing an illegal program. The court told him to stop. He wouldn’t stop. and now congress is going to tell the president, this must end. This is a big victory for the American people.”
Paul also walked back his statement from last night on the Senate floor that “people here in town think I’m making a huge mistake. Some of them I think secretly want their to be an attack on the United States so they can blame it on me.”
“I think sometimes in the heat of battle hyperbole can get the better of anyone,” Paul explained. “That may be the problem there. The point I was trying to make is that I think people do use fear to try to get us to give up our liberty.”
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