We have to admit Congressman Dana Rohrabacher's Tequila-sponsored Kookville Express No Soul Train occasionally–accidentally?–finds a depot located in reality and, by gosh, mark this July as one of those rare, historic moments.
Last week, Rohrabacher–Orange County's senior, career politician–voted to limit massive government electronic snooping into the lives of all American citizens by the National Security Agency (NSA).
But the House voted 217 to 205 to block efforts to restrict the NSA's domestic data collections.
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Though the majority of Republican representatives sided with Big Brother-expansion, Rohrabacher was one of 94 Republicans who joined 111 Democrats to argue otherwise.
Using his Twitter account in the aftermath, the Costa Mesa Republican said the “motive” for his vote was because “dramatically expanding [government] power to spy on honest citizens [is] not the way to protect us.”
He also wrote that he doesn't want to limit the NSA monitoring of terrorists, but “voted to limit what it can to monitor honest citizens.”
He added that “giving so much power to our gov lays the foundation for tyranny, even if those in charge now R benevolent, which is debatable.”
Those joining Rohrabacher in his vote included regional Democrats Loretta Sanchez, Linda Sanchez and Alan Lowenthal.
Local Republicans siding with the NSA were, not surprisingly, Ed Royce and Darrell Issa.
Irvine Republican John Campbell, who recently declared he will not seek re-election, did not vote.
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CNN-featured investigative reporter R. Scott Moxley has won Journalist of the Year honors at the Los Angeles Press Club; been named Distinguished Journalist of the Year by the LA Society of Professional Journalists; obtained one of the last exclusive prison interviews with Charles Manson disciple Susan Atkins; won inclusion in Jeffrey Toobin’s The Best American Crime Reporting for his coverage of a white supremacist’s senseless murder of a beloved Vietnamese refugee; launched multi-year probes that resulted in the FBI arrests and convictions of the top three ranking members of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department; and gained praise from New York Times Magazine writers for his “herculean job” exposing entrenched Southern California law enforcement corruption.