his is hardly a surprise given the events of the past few weeks, but the House on Friday passed legislation to authorize intelligence activities for the next year. It sailed through easily, 345 to 59. While a number of Representatives, including Zoe Lofgren, Justin Amash and Rush Holt attempted to make amendments that would do things like stop the NSA from adding back doors to encryption, or beef up whistleblower protections, I imagine it will surprise none of you to discover that the Rules Committee did not allow those amendments to come up for a vote. Notably, those three Reps whose amendments were ignored also voted against the overall reauthorization. It's interesting to note that Rep. Sensenbrenner voted against the reauthorization as well, though it's not clear why. Rep. Alan Grayson actually introduced a bunch of amendments to curb the NSA's powers, none of which were allowed, but he still voted in favor of the overall authorization. In the end, this reauthorization was going to go through one way or the other, so this isn't a huge surprise. With the failure of most of what was good in the USA Freedom Act in the House, it quickly became clear that the House wasn't going to fix things any time soon.