Misinterpreting. Riiiiiiiight.

A bipartisan group of 26 US senators has written to intelligence chiefs to complain that the administration is relying on a "secret body of law" to collect massive amounts of data on US citizens.

The senators accuse officials of making misleading statements and demand that the director of national intelligence James Clapper answer a series of specific questions on the scale of domestic surveillance as well as the legal justification for it.

In their strongly-worded letter to Clapper, the senators said they believed the government may be misinterpreting existing legislation to justify the sweeping collection of telephone and internet data revealed by the Guardian.

[...]

The letter was organised by Oregan Democrat Ron Wyden, a member of the intelligence committee, but includes four Republican senators: Mark Kirk, Mike Lee, Lisa Murkowski and Dean Heller.

  Guardian

The list of senators who signed the letter is at the end of that article if you care to know who isn’t afraid of the NSA (yet). Had this happened during W’s reign, there would have been no Republicans, those staunch defenders of civil liberties and tireless warriors against government intrusion into private affairs. But can we assume that the Democrats who didn’t sign know that the NSA “has something on them?”

Now, here’s what needs to be drilled home to all those Republican voters out there to get this thing halted:

"The Patriot Act's 'business records' authority can be used to give the government access to private financial, medical, consumer and firearm sales records, among others," said a press statement.

The government doesn’t need a national firearms registration list. The NSA already has all the records they need. Oh, but wait, I’m being overly optimistic. The rabble would only want that part about collecting firearms sales records stricken.

Finally, let us not forget that James Clapper lies to Congress when asked by them about the program. So I’m not sure what good it’s going to do to get him up there again.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.