Will GOP Rebel Justin Amash Bring Down the NSA—and His Own Party?
Will GOP Rebel Justin Amash Bring Down the NSA—and His Own Party?
The rising Republican star wants the government out of your data. And basically everything else.
—By Tim Murphy November/December 2013
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/11/justin-amash-nsa-surveillance
Update: Last month, few members of Congress worked harder to send the the federal government careening toward a shutdown and an unprecedented default than Michigan Rep. Justin Amash. But with the most recent manufactured crisis in the rearview mirror (for now), the second-term libertarian has shifted his focus back to the issue that made him such an unlikely coalition builder. Amash joined 70 Republican and Democratic colleagues last week to introduce legislation designed to rein in the surveillance state. The bill's sponsor? Wisconsin GOP Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, the author of the PATRIOT Act, and as I reported in the September/October issue of Mother Jones, one of the congressmen Amash had lobbied on reforming the National Security Agency. Amash, whose initial attempt to curb the agency's powers fell just 12 votes short of passage last summer, may stand a better chance this time around: at least a half-dozen representatives who opposed the measure now say they'd vote differently. Even as he faces a primary challenge from a Republican businessman, Amash has continued to take a baseball bat to the GOP hornets' nest on Twitter, where he recently dismissed House intelligence committee chairman Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) as "an NSA publicist."
Anticipation is rising on a night in early August as about 300 starry-eyed libertarians gather at George Mason University in Arlington, Virginia, for a lesson on how to save the Republican Party, the Constitution, and maybe America. The hero they've come to see is Justin Amash, a 33-year-old Michigan congressman who has spent the previous two months crusading against National Security Agency surveillance. The GOP gadfly is joined by three other congressional newcomers who serve as Amash's ideological sidekicks. As the crowd jumps to its feet to greet Amash, one young activist can't contain himself: "I'm on a first-name basis with the man who wants to save the Fourth Amendment!"
Just one week earlier, Amash had brought the House of Representatives to a standstill ..........
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