Vox Sentences: France’s most dramatic response to Charlie Hebdo yet

1. Je veux te voir

Prime Minister of France Manuel Valls (left) and French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve. (Yves Malenfer MI DICOM/Ministere de l'Interieur/Getty Images)

• The French Parliament has approved legislation to dramatically increase government surveillance powers, which is drawing comparisons to the Patriot Act in the US.

  [NYT / Alissa Rubin]

• The bill "allows intelligence agencies to tap phones and emails without seeking permission from a judge"; the agencies could also put cameras and recorders in private residences, install keyloggers, and collect massive amounts of online metadata.

  [The Guardian / Angelique Chrisafis]

• An independent commission would oversee the surveillance, but would lack the power to block it; the commission could issue a negative opinion, but the prime minister would ultimately have to affirm it for the operation to halt.

  [FT / Anne-Sylvaine Chassany]

• The proposal was drafted a mere three days after the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris in January, and is meant to strengthen the agencies' abilities to identify and disrupt similar plots in the future.

  [BBC]

• The metadata aspect of the bill has garnered comparisons to the NSA surveillance in the US revealed by Edward Snowden; for what's it's worth, it doesn't appear that France participated in those activities or cooperated with the NSA.

  [The Verge / Russell Brandom]

• Prime Minister Manuel Valls rejects analogies to the US case, stating, "This is not a French Patriot Act."

  [Reuters / Julien Ponthus and Ingrid Melander]

• Both major parties — the ruling Socialists and the center-right UMP — supported the legislation; now it goes to the Senate for final approval.

  [FT / Anne-Sylvaine Chassany]

• Amnesty International's Gauri van Gulik: "This bill would take France a step closer to a surveillance state where nothing is secret except the surveillance itself."

  [Amnesty International]

• The far-right National Front opposed the bill, despite being hardliners on terrorism in general, because it was afraid its members would find themselves spied upon as well.

  [FT / Anne-Sylvaine Chassany]

2. Islamic State of Iraq and Syria and Texas

A Garland Police car is parked outside of the Curtis Culwell Center in Garland, Texas, the site of the shooting. (Ben Torres/Getty Images)

• ISIS has claimed responsibility for the shooting in Garland, Texas, that left both shooters dead and one security guard injured outside an anti-Muslim event.

  [NYT / Dan Bilefsky and Ben Hubbard]

• Elton Simpson, one of the deceased shooters, had expressed interest in traveling to Syria to fight for ISIS before he died.

  [ABC News / Brian Ross, Rhonda Schwartz, Randy Kreider, and James Gordon]

• But ISIS has a track record of claiming responsibility for attacks it had nothing to do with.

  [The Atlantic / Adam Chandler]

• It's possible Simpson and his accomplice Nadir Soofi were "auditioning" for ISIS by trying to execute the attack.

  [CNN / Holly Yan]

• Joshua Keating: this doesn't mean ISIS can execute attacks on US soil. But it does mean it's replacing al-Qaeda as "the affiliation of choice for Western jihadists."

  [Slate / Joshua Keating]

3. Dunford-mentum

DUNFORD. (Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

• President Obama has announced that Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford will succeed Army Gen. Martin Dempsey as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

  [NYT / Peter Baker]

• Dunford previously served as the top US commander in Afghanistan.

  [Washington Post / Dan Lamothe]

• He has an impeccable reputation within the Marines, and jumped from one-star general to four in only three years.

  [NBC News / Elizabeth Chuck]

• Here's a rundown of the top four contenders to replace Dunford as commandant of the Marine Corps.

  [Washington Post / Dan Lamothe]

• Dempsey has had a solid relationship with the White House, but he had a tendency toward outspokenness (for example, contradicting the White House by saying ground troops might be needed to beat ISIS) that was sometimes inconvenient.

  [Politico / Austin Wright, Leigh Munsil, and Philip Ewing]

4. Misc.

• He's not as famous as his buddies Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, and Ted Cruz, but Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) has quietly become the most interesting policy voice in the Republican party.

  [National Journal / Michelle Cottle]

• Section 215 of the Patriot Act — the legal basis for the NSA's mass collection of phone call records — is set to expire in four weeks. Let it.

  [Slate / Jameel Jaffer and Patrick Toomey]

• "Honey Bunches of Lies" is just an A+++ headline.

  [Slate / Rachel Gross]

• MAOI antidepressants are highly effective but rarely prescribed. Why?

  [Slate Star Codex / Scott Alexander]

• Kirsten Gillibrand and Rosa DeLauro's paid parental leave proposal looks pretty good.

  [Vox / Matt Yglesias]

5. Verbatim

• "The source of strange radio signals that have left astronomers at Australia's most famous radio telescope scratching their heads for 17 years has finally been discovered. It turns out that it was a microwave oven."

  [Wired / Daniel Culpan]

• "One way philosophers might think about solving the social justice problem would be by simply abolishing the family."

  [Adam Swift to ABC Australia / Joe Gelonesi]

• "It's hard to know which party's behavior was more remarkable – the 'polite' bank robber who explained to bank tellers that, although he was robbing their bank, he had no gun, no knife, and planned no attack, or the tellers who willingly handed over thousands of shekels."

  [Arutz Sheva 7 / Moshe Cohen]