Showing posts with label Rand Paul. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rand Paul. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 27, 2013
Where are the civil libertarians?
America is shamed that only Rand Paul is talking about drone executions
Where are the civil libertarians in the president's party that we must rely on a Tea Party Republican to champion this issue?
Amy Goodman
Thursday 7 March 2013
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/mar/07/america-shamed-rand-paul-drone-executions
You could say that a filibuster occurs when a senator drones on and on. The problem with the US Senate was that there were too few senators speaking about drones this week.
President Barack Obama's controversial nomination of John Brennan as director of the Central Intelligence Agency was held up Wednesday afternoon by a Senate filibuster. The reason: Brennan's role in targeted killings by drones, and President Obama's presumed authority to kill US citizens, without any due process, if they pose an "imminent threat". The effort was led by Tea Party Republican Rand Paul of Kentucky, joined by several of his Republican colleagues. Among the Democrats, at the time of this writing, only Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon had joined in the genuine, old-fashioned "talking filibuster", wherein the activities of the Senate floor are held up by a senator's speech.
Members of Congress, tasked with oversight of intelligence and military matters, have repeatedly demanded the memoranda from the White House detailing the legal basis for the drone program, only to be repeatedly denied. The nomination of Brennan has opened up the debate, forcing the Obama administration to make nominal gestures of compliance. The answers so far have not satisfied Senator Paul. Nearing hour six of his filibuster, Senator Paul admitted:
"I can't ultimately stop the nomination, but what I can do is try to draw attention to this and try to get an answer … that would be something if we could get an answer from the president … if he would say explicitly that noncombatants in America won't be killed by drones. The reason it has to be answered is because our foreign drone strike program does kill noncombatants. They may argue that they are conspiring or they may someday be combatants, but if that is the same standard that we are going to use in the United States, it is a far different country than I know about."
The issue of extrajudicial execution of US citizens, whether on US soil or elsewhere, is clearly vital. But also important is the US government's now-seemingly routine killing of civilians around the world, whether by drone strikes, night raids conducted by special operations forces or other lethal means.
Rand Paul's filibuster followed a curious route, including references to Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, and quotes from noted progressive, constitutional attorney and Guardian columnist Glenn Greenwald and blogger Kevin Gosztala of Firedoglake.
US Attorney General Eric Holder sent a letter to Senator Paul, 4 March, writing:
"It is possible, I suppose, to imagine an extraordinary circumstance in which it would be necessary and appropriate under the Constitution and applicable laws of the United States for the president to authorize the military to use lethal force within the territory of the United States."
Holder noted that Paul's question was "entirely hypothetical". So, on the Senate floor, Paul brought up the case of two actual US citizens killed by drone strikes, Anwar al-Awlaki and his son, Abdulrahman. Anwar al-Awlaki was killed by a US drone strike in Yemen on 30 September 2011. Two weeks later, also in Yemen, his 16-year-old son Abdulrahman, a Denver native, was also killed by a drone strike. Paul asked during his filibuster:
"If you happen to be the son of a bad person, is that enough to kill you?"
As Senator Paul filibustered, Will Fitzgibbon wrote from the Bureau of Investigative Journalism in London:
"Last month, we launched a new drones project: Naming the Dead. The aim of this project is to identify as many of the more than 2,500 victims of US drone strikes in Pakistan as possible. Given we currently do not know the identities of 80% of those killed, we believe this is a crucial and missing step to having a more transparent drones debate …
"With all the attention being recently paid to American citizens killed by drones and with the drone debate growing, we thought it would be a good time to remind ourselves of the individual human stories of drone victims. Those we know about and those we don't."
Barack Obama and John Brennan direct the drone strikes that are killing thousands of civilians. It doesn't make us safer. It makes whole populations, from Yemen to Pakistan, hate us. Senator Paul's outrage with the president's claimed right to kill US citizens is entirely appropriate. That there is not more outrage at the thousands killed around the globe is shameful … and dangerous.
• Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column
Monday, January 30, 2012
TSA Directly Violated US Constitution By Detaining Senator Rand Paul
Steve Watson
January 23, 2012
http://www.infowars.com/tsa-directly-violated-us-constitution-by-detaining-senator-rand-paul/
In preventing Kentucky Senator Rand Paul from flying to Washington this morning, the TSA directly violated the law as written in the US Constitution.
The Constitution specifically protects federal lawmakers from being detained while en route to Washington DC.
Article I, Section 6 states:
“The Senators and Representatives…shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony and Breach of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest during their Attendance at the Session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same….”
Rand Paul was travelling from his home in Louisville to attend a session in the Senate today.
This is the reason that TSA officials have since put out the talking point in the media that Rand Paul was never officially detained, despite the fact that the Senator himself confirmed that he was told to sit in a cubicle and wait without any indication of when he would be allowed to leave.
The Senate is back in session at 2 p.m., and votes are scheduled for 4:30 p.m.
Senator Paul was allowed to board a second flight after a separate screening by TSA agents, however, it remains to be seen whether he will make it to the capital in time.
January 23, 2012
http://www.infowars.com/tsa-directly-violated-us-constitution-by-detaining-senator-rand-paul/
In preventing Kentucky Senator Rand Paul from flying to Washington this morning, the TSA directly violated the law as written in the US Constitution.
The Constitution specifically protects federal lawmakers from being detained while en route to Washington DC.
Article I, Section 6 states:
“The Senators and Representatives…shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony and Breach of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest during their Attendance at the Session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same….”
Rand Paul was travelling from his home in Louisville to attend a session in the Senate today.
This is the reason that TSA officials have since put out the talking point in the media that Rand Paul was never officially detained, despite the fact that the Senator himself confirmed that he was told to sit in a cubicle and wait without any indication of when he would be allowed to leave.
The Senate is back in session at 2 p.m., and votes are scheduled for 4:30 p.m.
Senator Paul was allowed to board a second flight after a separate screening by TSA agents, however, it remains to be seen whether he will make it to the capital in time.
Thursday, April 28, 2011
US House of Representatives votes to abolish Medicare
By Patrick Martin
16 April 2011
http://wsws.org/articles/2011/apr2011/medi-a16.shtml
In the most reactionary social policy proposal in recent US history, the House of Representatives voted Friday afternoon to support the abolition of the Medicare program, the government health insurance system for tens of millions of retired and disabled Americans. The 235-193 margin was a near party-line vote, with only four Republicans opposing the bill and no Democrats supporting it.
The vote was to approve an overall budget resolution for fiscal year 2012, which begins October 1. The bill drafted by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan and backed by the entire House Republican leadership calls for $6.2 trillion in spending cuts over the next 10 years, with at least $3 trillion of this sum to be handed over to the wealthy in the form of additional tax cuts for the highest income bracket and for corporations.
The budget resolution serves as a framework for the bills that will actually authorize spending for FY 2012 by the various departments of the federal government. Even if passed by both houses of Congress, it is not legally binding and does not go the White House for the president’s signature to become law. This House version, in any event, has little chance of being passed by the Democratic-controlled Senate.
Nonetheless, from a political standpoint the House vote is of enormous significance. For the first time in modern American history, a major social benefit is being targeted by one of the chambers of Congress for complete elimination. Every US resident 65 years and older is eligible for Medicare, which pays the bulk of the cost of hospitalization and other health care.
The Ryan budget resolution phases out Medicare for all Americans now aged 55 or younger. Instead of guaranteed coverage when they reach the age of 65, they would receive “premium supports,” or vouchers, to buy private insurance once they reach the age of 67. The value of the vouchers would be capped at a level that assures ever-rising health insurance costs for all those enrolled in the program.
Current Medicare recipients, and those over 55 who will become eligible for Medicare during the next 10 years, would remain under the preset program. However, the funding would be sharply cut, forcing cuts in coverage and reimbursement rates that would lead to more and more doctors and hospitals refusing to take Medicare patients.
The Republican budget also effectively eliminates Medicaid, the companion program to Medicare that provides health coverage for the poor, as well as paying for nursing home care for many seniors.
Medicaid is now a joint federal-state program, with the federal government bearing most of the costs and setting minimum standards for coverage. The Obama health care legislation passed last year proposed to expand Medicaid as one means of providing health insurance for working people who cannot obtain it through their employers.
Under the budget resolution adopted Friday, Medicaid would become an entirely state-run program, with federal support limited to block grants that would fall steadily behind the pace of health care costs, forcing states to continuously reduce benefits, eligibility or both. Total Medicaid spending would be slashed by $771 billion over 10 years.
The Republican resolution is motivated not by the desire to reduce the federal deficit, but by class hostility to the provision of any public social benefits. When Congressman Ryan outlined the plan in a speech two weeks ago to the right-wing American Enterprise Institute, he condemned such benefits as encouraging laziness and indolence—although the primary beneficiaries of Medicare and Medicaid are the elderly, poor children and the disabled, those who in any decent society should not be working.
The brutality of this proposal did not prevent an outpouring of praise from the corporate-controlled media and the Washington establishment. On the contrary, it was this characteristic that most recommended the Ryan plan, leading to effusions from pundits like David Brooks of New York Times hailing Ryan’s “courage” and “realism.”
The Democratic Party response to the proposed termination of Medicare and Medicaid is a mixture of demagogy and cowardice. President Obama, after stalling for a week to give the Ryan plan more traction, finally denounced it in his budget speech Wednesday. But the Democrats merely propose to accomplish the same social goals—slashing spending for health care and other social needs—using less strident rhetoric and more subtle tactics.
From a purely electoral standpoint, the Republican proposal to destroy Medicare and Medicaid might appear reckless, even suicidal. The policy they are proposing is deeply unpopular: a recent Gallup poll found just 13 percent supporting a complete overhaul of Medicare, and opposition was particularly strong among the elderly, who backed Republican candidates by a 21-point margin in the 2010 congressional elections.
However, the policies of the US government are not determined by public opinion, but by the class interests of the American financial aristocracy, which controls both parties and uses their largely stage-managed conflicts to delude the population and sustain the illusion of electoral “choice.” The ruling class is determined to make working people pay the price for the Wall Street bailout as well as three wars and the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.
The real attitude of the Democrats towards deficit reduction was demonstrated Thursday in the passage of the fiscal year 2011 budget resolution negotiated by the congressional Republicans and the White House. The bill cuts domestic social spending by $38.5 billion, the largest one-year cut ever enacted by Congress.
There was a last-minute hitch in the congressional approval process for the FY 2011 budget, after the Congressional Budget Office issued a report detailing the size and timing of the cuts and finding that the reduction in current-year outlays, as opposed to overall spending authorization, would be only $352 million. This prompted a group of the most right-wing Republicans in the House to declare their opposition to the budget deal.
The House Democrats stepped in to assure passage of the bill. According to press accounts, the Democratic leadership in the House held back the votes of some 75 Democrats, waiting to see how many votes would be needed to approve the bill. At one point, the vote tally stood at 211 for the bill and 140 against, with 66 Democrats and only 16 Republicans not yet voting. The final tally showed passage by 260 to 167.
The New York Times reported back-channel contacts between leaders of the two parties to finalize the parliamentary maneuver: “Realizing that the majority was going to need Democratic votes to pass the measure and avoid a [federal government] shutdown, aides said that Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the No. 3 Republican, reached out to Mr. Hoyer, the second-ranking Democrat, for help on Thursday. Democrats initially did not have enough firm supporters of the measure, one official said, prompting Mr. Hoyer and his allies to reach out to lawmakers and round up what ultimately amounted to 81 Democratic votes, enough to provide a comfortable margin.”
In the event, 22 of these 81 Democrats were allowed by the leadership to vote against the budget so they could posture in front of their constituents as opponents of the cuts. The remaining 59 Democrats voted for the budget, exactly offsetting the 59 Republicans who voted against the bill proposed by their own leadership. Without the Democratic votes, the deal would have collapsed.
No such horse-trading was required in the Senate, where the record cuts in domestic social spending had overwhelming bipartisan support. The budget passed by the House was approved by the Senate 81-19, with most of the opposition coming from the right wing of the Republican Party, including figures like Rand Paul of Kentucky and Jim DeMint of South Carolina who wanted even greater cuts.
16 April 2011
http://wsws.org/articles/2011/apr2011/medi-a16.shtml
In the most reactionary social policy proposal in recent US history, the House of Representatives voted Friday afternoon to support the abolition of the Medicare program, the government health insurance system for tens of millions of retired and disabled Americans. The 235-193 margin was a near party-line vote, with only four Republicans opposing the bill and no Democrats supporting it.
The vote was to approve an overall budget resolution for fiscal year 2012, which begins October 1. The bill drafted by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan and backed by the entire House Republican leadership calls for $6.2 trillion in spending cuts over the next 10 years, with at least $3 trillion of this sum to be handed over to the wealthy in the form of additional tax cuts for the highest income bracket and for corporations.
The budget resolution serves as a framework for the bills that will actually authorize spending for FY 2012 by the various departments of the federal government. Even if passed by both houses of Congress, it is not legally binding and does not go the White House for the president’s signature to become law. This House version, in any event, has little chance of being passed by the Democratic-controlled Senate.
Nonetheless, from a political standpoint the House vote is of enormous significance. For the first time in modern American history, a major social benefit is being targeted by one of the chambers of Congress for complete elimination. Every US resident 65 years and older is eligible for Medicare, which pays the bulk of the cost of hospitalization and other health care.
The Ryan budget resolution phases out Medicare for all Americans now aged 55 or younger. Instead of guaranteed coverage when they reach the age of 65, they would receive “premium supports,” or vouchers, to buy private insurance once they reach the age of 67. The value of the vouchers would be capped at a level that assures ever-rising health insurance costs for all those enrolled in the program.
Current Medicare recipients, and those over 55 who will become eligible for Medicare during the next 10 years, would remain under the preset program. However, the funding would be sharply cut, forcing cuts in coverage and reimbursement rates that would lead to more and more doctors and hospitals refusing to take Medicare patients.
The Republican budget also effectively eliminates Medicaid, the companion program to Medicare that provides health coverage for the poor, as well as paying for nursing home care for many seniors.
Medicaid is now a joint federal-state program, with the federal government bearing most of the costs and setting minimum standards for coverage. The Obama health care legislation passed last year proposed to expand Medicaid as one means of providing health insurance for working people who cannot obtain it through their employers.
Under the budget resolution adopted Friday, Medicaid would become an entirely state-run program, with federal support limited to block grants that would fall steadily behind the pace of health care costs, forcing states to continuously reduce benefits, eligibility or both. Total Medicaid spending would be slashed by $771 billion over 10 years.
The Republican resolution is motivated not by the desire to reduce the federal deficit, but by class hostility to the provision of any public social benefits. When Congressman Ryan outlined the plan in a speech two weeks ago to the right-wing American Enterprise Institute, he condemned such benefits as encouraging laziness and indolence—although the primary beneficiaries of Medicare and Medicaid are the elderly, poor children and the disabled, those who in any decent society should not be working.
The brutality of this proposal did not prevent an outpouring of praise from the corporate-controlled media and the Washington establishment. On the contrary, it was this characteristic that most recommended the Ryan plan, leading to effusions from pundits like David Brooks of New York Times hailing Ryan’s “courage” and “realism.”
The Democratic Party response to the proposed termination of Medicare and Medicaid is a mixture of demagogy and cowardice. President Obama, after stalling for a week to give the Ryan plan more traction, finally denounced it in his budget speech Wednesday. But the Democrats merely propose to accomplish the same social goals—slashing spending for health care and other social needs—using less strident rhetoric and more subtle tactics.
From a purely electoral standpoint, the Republican proposal to destroy Medicare and Medicaid might appear reckless, even suicidal. The policy they are proposing is deeply unpopular: a recent Gallup poll found just 13 percent supporting a complete overhaul of Medicare, and opposition was particularly strong among the elderly, who backed Republican candidates by a 21-point margin in the 2010 congressional elections.
However, the policies of the US government are not determined by public opinion, but by the class interests of the American financial aristocracy, which controls both parties and uses their largely stage-managed conflicts to delude the population and sustain the illusion of electoral “choice.” The ruling class is determined to make working people pay the price for the Wall Street bailout as well as three wars and the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.
The real attitude of the Democrats towards deficit reduction was demonstrated Thursday in the passage of the fiscal year 2011 budget resolution negotiated by the congressional Republicans and the White House. The bill cuts domestic social spending by $38.5 billion, the largest one-year cut ever enacted by Congress.
There was a last-minute hitch in the congressional approval process for the FY 2011 budget, after the Congressional Budget Office issued a report detailing the size and timing of the cuts and finding that the reduction in current-year outlays, as opposed to overall spending authorization, would be only $352 million. This prompted a group of the most right-wing Republicans in the House to declare their opposition to the budget deal.
The House Democrats stepped in to assure passage of the bill. According to press accounts, the Democratic leadership in the House held back the votes of some 75 Democrats, waiting to see how many votes would be needed to approve the bill. At one point, the vote tally stood at 211 for the bill and 140 against, with 66 Democrats and only 16 Republicans not yet voting. The final tally showed passage by 260 to 167.
The New York Times reported back-channel contacts between leaders of the two parties to finalize the parliamentary maneuver: “Realizing that the majority was going to need Democratic votes to pass the measure and avoid a [federal government] shutdown, aides said that Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the No. 3 Republican, reached out to Mr. Hoyer, the second-ranking Democrat, for help on Thursday. Democrats initially did not have enough firm supporters of the measure, one official said, prompting Mr. Hoyer and his allies to reach out to lawmakers and round up what ultimately amounted to 81 Democratic votes, enough to provide a comfortable margin.”
In the event, 22 of these 81 Democrats were allowed by the leadership to vote against the budget so they could posture in front of their constituents as opponents of the cuts. The remaining 59 Democrats voted for the budget, exactly offsetting the 59 Republicans who voted against the bill proposed by their own leadership. Without the Democratic votes, the deal would have collapsed.
No such horse-trading was required in the Senate, where the record cuts in domestic social spending had overwhelming bipartisan support. The budget passed by the House was approved by the Senate 81-19, with most of the opposition coming from the right wing of the Republican Party, including figures like Rand Paul of Kentucky and Jim DeMint of South Carolina who wanted even greater cuts.
Friday, October 29, 2010
Activist assaulted by Rand Paul supporters in Kentucky
http://wsws.org/articles/2010/oct2010/paul-o27.shtml
Activist assaulted by Rand Paul supporters in Kentucky
Hiram Lee
27 October 2010
A video widely distributed on the Internet documents supporters of Rand Paul, the Republican and Tea Party-backed senate candidate in Kentucky, physically assaulting a liberal activist prior to a debate held on Monday in Lexington.
The victim, Lauren Valle, 23, a member of the pro-Democratic Party group MoveOn.org, was among a crowd of Paul supporters who had gathered at the site of the final debate of the election. As the candidate made his way into the debate hall, Valle attempted to present him with a satirical “employee-of-the-month award” from a fictional company called “RepubliCorp,” used by MoveOn.org to draw attention to Republican candidates’ ties to major corporations.
Video captured a number of Paul’s supporters reacting to Valle’s presence with evident rage. They violently forced Valle, a small woman who clearly posed no threat, to the ground. At least one man in the crowd then held her on the ground against her will, while another man holding a Rand Paul campaign sign stomped on her head, shoving her face into the concrete sidewalk. The assailant was later revealed to be Tim Profitt, a Paul campaign worker.
It is clear that the force of the kick could have severely injured Valle. While Valle was able to speak with the local media following the incident, her face was left swollen and her neck and shoulders were hurt. She spent the night in a Lexington hospital with a concussion and a sprained shoulder.
The attack is another indication of the type of deranged and fascistic elements being mobilized by the Tea Party movement and its candidates as they seek to form a popular base for extreme right-wing politics in the US. The Tea Party appeals to the most backward sentiments—anti-immigrant chauvinism, militarism, racism, religious intolerance, anti-gay bigotry—with the full support of its corporate backers and the Republican Party establishment.
The viscious rhetoric espoused by leading figures in the Tea Party movement, including Rand Paul, has created a political climate that, in effect, sanctions and encourages attacks like the one carried out on Lauren Valle.
The emergence of the far-right, and the growing threat of violence it portends, cannot be fought through the Democratic Party. This is made clear by the immediate context in which the attack on Valle occurred, the Senate race in Kentucky, which has been a thoroughly reactionary affair in which the objective interests of the state’s working class, devastated by the economic crisis, are completely blocked out.
Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway, Paul’s Democratic opponent in the election, has run a right-wing, anti-working class campaign in which he has attacked Paul from the right.
Conway is a millionaire, a supporter of the Iraq War, an advocate of the indefinite extension of the Bush tax cuts, an outspoken advocate of the death penalty, an opponent of gay marriage, and a steadfast ally of the state’s coal companies.
Most recently, Conway has attempted to smear Paul by questioning his devotion to Christianity in a series of television attack ads.
It was revealed late Tuesday afternoon that the assailant filmed in the video is Profitt, who serves as Paul’s campaign coordinator in Bourbon County. The Paul campaign said in a statement that is has “disassociated itself” from Profitt.
On Tuesday, Profitt was served with a summons to appear in court. Police have lodged fourth-degree assault charges against him.
Profitt insisted the incident was not as bad as it looked and attempted to justify his actions. “I’m sorry that it came to that, and I apologize if it appeared overly forceful, but I was concerned about Rand’s safety,” he told the Associated Press.
In comments to the Huffington Post, Valle said she sensed the assault might have been premeditated. Several people came up behind her before the attack, and she said she heard one of them say, “We are here to do crowd control (and) we might have to take someone out.”
“One or two people twisted my arms behind my back and took me down,” Valle wrote. “It was about two-to-three seconds after that that another person stomped on my head.”
Police said that Rand supporters had earlier fingered Valle as a threat, but said that they declined to act because she had not done anything illegal. “It’s not illegal to take a picture with somebody,” Lexington police spokesperson Sherelle Roberts said.
Another Conway supporter said he was also threatened by Paul campaign workers at the event. Michael J. Grossman, described by the Lexington Herald-Leader as “a corporate official in Lexington,” said a Paul supporter tried to “take me down” moments after Valle was attacked.
“It was a relatively calm political event until the Rand Paul people simply went nuts when their candidate arrived,” Grossman said. “By and large they appeared to be a very hostile group of people who were looking for trouble, and I guess they got it.”
Activist assaulted by Rand Paul supporters in Kentucky
Hiram Lee
27 October 2010
A video widely distributed on the Internet documents supporters of Rand Paul, the Republican and Tea Party-backed senate candidate in Kentucky, physically assaulting a liberal activist prior to a debate held on Monday in Lexington.
The victim, Lauren Valle, 23, a member of the pro-Democratic Party group MoveOn.org, was among a crowd of Paul supporters who had gathered at the site of the final debate of the election. As the candidate made his way into the debate hall, Valle attempted to present him with a satirical “employee-of-the-month award” from a fictional company called “RepubliCorp,” used by MoveOn.org to draw attention to Republican candidates’ ties to major corporations.
Video captured a number of Paul’s supporters reacting to Valle’s presence with evident rage. They violently forced Valle, a small woman who clearly posed no threat, to the ground. At least one man in the crowd then held her on the ground against her will, while another man holding a Rand Paul campaign sign stomped on her head, shoving her face into the concrete sidewalk. The assailant was later revealed to be Tim Profitt, a Paul campaign worker.
It is clear that the force of the kick could have severely injured Valle. While Valle was able to speak with the local media following the incident, her face was left swollen and her neck and shoulders were hurt. She spent the night in a Lexington hospital with a concussion and a sprained shoulder.
The attack is another indication of the type of deranged and fascistic elements being mobilized by the Tea Party movement and its candidates as they seek to form a popular base for extreme right-wing politics in the US. The Tea Party appeals to the most backward sentiments—anti-immigrant chauvinism, militarism, racism, religious intolerance, anti-gay bigotry—with the full support of its corporate backers and the Republican Party establishment.
The viscious rhetoric espoused by leading figures in the Tea Party movement, including Rand Paul, has created a political climate that, in effect, sanctions and encourages attacks like the one carried out on Lauren Valle.
The emergence of the far-right, and the growing threat of violence it portends, cannot be fought through the Democratic Party. This is made clear by the immediate context in which the attack on Valle occurred, the Senate race in Kentucky, which has been a thoroughly reactionary affair in which the objective interests of the state’s working class, devastated by the economic crisis, are completely blocked out.
Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway, Paul’s Democratic opponent in the election, has run a right-wing, anti-working class campaign in which he has attacked Paul from the right.
Conway is a millionaire, a supporter of the Iraq War, an advocate of the indefinite extension of the Bush tax cuts, an outspoken advocate of the death penalty, an opponent of gay marriage, and a steadfast ally of the state’s coal companies.
Most recently, Conway has attempted to smear Paul by questioning his devotion to Christianity in a series of television attack ads.
It was revealed late Tuesday afternoon that the assailant filmed in the video is Profitt, who serves as Paul’s campaign coordinator in Bourbon County. The Paul campaign said in a statement that is has “disassociated itself” from Profitt.
On Tuesday, Profitt was served with a summons to appear in court. Police have lodged fourth-degree assault charges against him.
Profitt insisted the incident was not as bad as it looked and attempted to justify his actions. “I’m sorry that it came to that, and I apologize if it appeared overly forceful, but I was concerned about Rand’s safety,” he told the Associated Press.
In comments to the Huffington Post, Valle said she sensed the assault might have been premeditated. Several people came up behind her before the attack, and she said she heard one of them say, “We are here to do crowd control (and) we might have to take someone out.”
“One or two people twisted my arms behind my back and took me down,” Valle wrote. “It was about two-to-three seconds after that that another person stomped on my head.”
Police said that Rand supporters had earlier fingered Valle as a threat, but said that they declined to act because she had not done anything illegal. “It’s not illegal to take a picture with somebody,” Lexington police spokesperson Sherelle Roberts said.
Another Conway supporter said he was also threatened by Paul campaign workers at the event. Michael J. Grossman, described by the Lexington Herald-Leader as “a corporate official in Lexington,” said a Paul supporter tried to “take me down” moments after Valle was attacked.
“It was a relatively calm political event until the Rand Paul people simply went nuts when their candidate arrived,” Grossman said. “By and large they appeared to be a very hostile group of people who were looking for trouble, and I guess they got it.”
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Aqua Dude
http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2010/10/aqua-dude.html
Straight Talk Espresso
Aqua Dude
Henry Rollins
October 18, 2010
The only thing Rand Paul has going for him is that, perhaps at one time, this incredibly silly man was inspired by the divine force known as Aqua Buddha. Whenever I think of those two words, I always picture Sean Penn’s character Spicoli from Fast Times At Ridgemont High saying them. When Rand Paul speaks, he sounds like a Rockville, Maryland, stoner. Rand Paul’s tragic “I’m late for a Flock Of Seagulls concert!” hair style will not allow me to take him seriously. The guy from Depeche Mode is holding on line one and wants his hair returned right now.
Free market, dude! There’s no such thing. There’s no free anything, not lunch, not an invasion of Iraq, not one damn item. If Rand Paul wins a Senate seat, which he very well may, Kentucky will find out very quickly how free the market isn’t. His desperate flailing against Jack Conway over the weekend when he claimed his opponent had insulted his religion was transparent pandering to the base. Rand Paul claims to be a “pro-life Christian.” If he had said he was a “pro-life Aqua Buddhist,” I would have sent him a copy of Robin Trower’s Bridge Of Sighs album as a campaign contribution. Duuuuuude!!!
In my mind I see a scene out of film that will never be made. Rand Paul stares at Jack Conway, loosens his tie, raises it to his forehead, and tightens it around his skull with the knot on the side, his New Wave curls bunching up ever so slightly. He says, “Jack Conway, you have offended my village, you have offended my people, you have offended … Aqua Buddha.” He then strikes the pose that Ralph Macchio did in the showdown scene in The Karate Kid. Jack Conway starts laughing to the point of tears and walks off the stage, leaving Rand Paul standing on one foot, arms suspended. Weeks later, everyone votes appropriately. Kentucky gets a new Senator and Las Vegas gets a new double act of Rand Paul and Christine O’Donnell that works a half-filled room five nights a week doing the old Louis Prima/Keely Smith book. I wonder how the free market would treat that one.
Straight Talk Espresso
Aqua Dude
Henry Rollins
October 18, 2010
The only thing Rand Paul has going for him is that, perhaps at one time, this incredibly silly man was inspired by the divine force known as Aqua Buddha. Whenever I think of those two words, I always picture Sean Penn’s character Spicoli from Fast Times At Ridgemont High saying them. When Rand Paul speaks, he sounds like a Rockville, Maryland, stoner. Rand Paul’s tragic “I’m late for a Flock Of Seagulls concert!” hair style will not allow me to take him seriously. The guy from Depeche Mode is holding on line one and wants his hair returned right now.
Free market, dude! There’s no such thing. There’s no free anything, not lunch, not an invasion of Iraq, not one damn item. If Rand Paul wins a Senate seat, which he very well may, Kentucky will find out very quickly how free the market isn’t. His desperate flailing against Jack Conway over the weekend when he claimed his opponent had insulted his religion was transparent pandering to the base. Rand Paul claims to be a “pro-life Christian.” If he had said he was a “pro-life Aqua Buddhist,” I would have sent him a copy of Robin Trower’s Bridge Of Sighs album as a campaign contribution. Duuuuuude!!!
In my mind I see a scene out of film that will never be made. Rand Paul stares at Jack Conway, loosens his tie, raises it to his forehead, and tightens it around his skull with the knot on the side, his New Wave curls bunching up ever so slightly. He says, “Jack Conway, you have offended my village, you have offended my people, you have offended … Aqua Buddha.” He then strikes the pose that Ralph Macchio did in the showdown scene in The Karate Kid. Jack Conway starts laughing to the point of tears and walks off the stage, leaving Rand Paul standing on one foot, arms suspended. Weeks later, everyone votes appropriately. Kentucky gets a new Senator and Las Vegas gets a new double act of Rand Paul and Christine O’Donnell that works a half-filled room five nights a week doing the old Louis Prima/Keely Smith book. I wonder how the free market would treat that one.
Thursday, September 2, 2010
Ron Paul Backs "Ground Zero Mosque," Splitting with Son Rand
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20014453-503544.html
August 23, 2010
Ron Paul Backs "Ground Zero Mosque," Splitting with Son Rand
Brian Montopoli
Libertarian Congressman Ron Paul is breaking with many of his fellow Republicans - among them his son Rand - to support the creation of the planned Islamic cultural center near the former site of the World Trade Center that has come to be known as the "ground zero mosque."
In a statement decrying "demagogy" around the issue, the former Republican presidential candidate wrote late last week that "the debate should have provided the conservative defenders of property rights with a perfect example of how the right to own property also protects the 1st Amendment rights of assembly and religion by supporting the building of the mosque."
"Instead, we hear lip service given to the property rights position while demanding that the need to be 'sensitive' requires an all-out assault on the building of a mosque, several blocks from 'ground zero,'" Paul continues.
He goes on to argue that "the neo-conservatives who demand continual war in the Middle East and Central Asia... never miss a chance to use hatred toward Muslims to rally support for the ill conceived preventative wars."
Adds Paul: "It is repeatedly said that 64% of the people, after listening to the political demagogues, don't want the mosque to be built. What would we do if 75% of the people insist that no more Catholic churches be built in New York City? The point being is that majorities can become oppressors of minority rights as well as individual dictators."
"This is all about hate and Islamaphobia," he argues.
The statement is particularly notable in light of comments on the issue by Paul's son, Kentucky Republican Senate nominee Rand Paul. Rand Paul has said that while he is hesitant to get involved in a local issue, he does not believe the cultural center should be built; "the Muslim community would better serve the healing process by making a donation to the memorial fund for the victims of September 11th," he said.
(By the way, Paul's Democratic opponent in the Senate race, Jack Conway, also opposes the center.)
Rand Paul got in trouble early in his general election campaign for staking out typically-Libertarian positions, most notably in questioning parts of the Civil Rights Act and Americans with Disabilities Act. He subsequently adopted more traditionally-Republican rhetoric and declined to embrace his father's full-throated opposition to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, among other causes important to many libertarians.
August 23, 2010
Ron Paul Backs "Ground Zero Mosque," Splitting with Son Rand
Brian Montopoli
Libertarian Congressman Ron Paul is breaking with many of his fellow Republicans - among them his son Rand - to support the creation of the planned Islamic cultural center near the former site of the World Trade Center that has come to be known as the "ground zero mosque."
In a statement decrying "demagogy" around the issue, the former Republican presidential candidate wrote late last week that "the debate should have provided the conservative defenders of property rights with a perfect example of how the right to own property also protects the 1st Amendment rights of assembly and religion by supporting the building of the mosque."
"Instead, we hear lip service given to the property rights position while demanding that the need to be 'sensitive' requires an all-out assault on the building of a mosque, several blocks from 'ground zero,'" Paul continues.
He goes on to argue that "the neo-conservatives who demand continual war in the Middle East and Central Asia... never miss a chance to use hatred toward Muslims to rally support for the ill conceived preventative wars."
Adds Paul: "It is repeatedly said that 64% of the people, after listening to the political demagogues, don't want the mosque to be built. What would we do if 75% of the people insist that no more Catholic churches be built in New York City? The point being is that majorities can become oppressors of minority rights as well as individual dictators."
"This is all about hate and Islamaphobia," he argues.
The statement is particularly notable in light of comments on the issue by Paul's son, Kentucky Republican Senate nominee Rand Paul. Rand Paul has said that while he is hesitant to get involved in a local issue, he does not believe the cultural center should be built; "the Muslim community would better serve the healing process by making a donation to the memorial fund for the victims of September 11th," he said.
(By the way, Paul's Democratic opponent in the Senate race, Jack Conway, also opposes the center.)
Rand Paul got in trouble early in his general election campaign for staking out typically-Libertarian positions, most notably in questioning parts of the Civil Rights Act and Americans with Disabilities Act. He subsequently adopted more traditionally-Republican rhetoric and declined to embrace his father's full-throated opposition to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, among other causes important to many libertarians.
Sunday, July 25, 2010
Rand Paul: America’s Poor Are Lucky to Have it so Good!
http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy/2010/07/10/rand-paul-americas-poor-are-lucky-duckies/
July 10, 2010
Rand Paul: America’s Poor Are Lucky to Have it so Good!
Joshua Holland
Here’s some authentic frontier gibberish from Rand Paul (via TPM):
“The poor in our country are enormously better off than the rest of the world,” Paul said. “Doesn’t mean we can’t do better, but we have to acknowledge and be proud of our system of capitalism, be proud of our American way.”
Here’s how he got to that conclusion:
One of the important lessons that came out of the Cold War — and this is an important description that I don’t think comes up enough — the Cold War was won by America because the engine of capitalism defeated the engine of socialism. The Soviets used to show a propaganda film — they wanted to show how horrible America was and how our poor were doing so poorly. They filmed a building in the poor section of New York with some broken windows and they said, ‘Oh this is how the poor in America lives.’ But it backfired on them because the Soviet citizens looked at that video closely and they saw flickering color television sets in all those windows.
Like the nonsensical claim that 50 percent of Americans pay no taxes, this is a zombie lie that will never rest. It can’t, because people like Rand Paul aren’t really defending American “capitalism” — they’re defending the great economic inequality that results from capitalism when its not balanced by a real social safety net. It’s axiomatic that the poor have it better off in countries with less inequality and greater ‘transfer payments.’ But more to the point, greater inequality leads to more people living in poverty — and we lead the developed world.
That’s what their “populism” is supporting. Economies with a more equitable distribution of wealth produce fewer millionaires, yes, but many fewer poor folks. So, the Right simply argues that our poor folks have TVs! And dishwashers! They’re doing great!
Half of all American children require food-stamps at some point before they hit 20 — a statistic that would shock the citizens of other advanced countries. But a dedicated consumer culture produces a lot of excess goods. You can get a TV at a yard sale for a dollar. Right now, on Craigslist’s San Francisco site, there are free dishwashers, a freezer, a stereo system and many, many television sets available for nothing. A few days ago, I saw a 50-inch wide-screen TV that would have gone for a few thousand dollars ten years ago sitting on the street with a sign that said, ‘works fine.’ Perhaps Rand Paul, who worships at the Church of Big Business, never heard of the term “planned obsolescence.” It’s right there in his GE Bible.
In my deftly written forthcoming book (DWFB?), I look at one of the silliest of these arguments (in the context of the Right’s well established mythology about European decline). Here’s a little taste:
One of the most entertaining claims to U.S. superiority is this: we live in bigger homes. As the Wall Street Journal was happy to point out, “The average living space for poor American households is 1,200 square feet. In Europe, the average space for all households, not just the poor, is 1,000 square feet.” Case closed!
Well, not really. This is a simple matter of population density: in the EU-15, there are 120 people per kilometer; in the United States, we only have 29 people per kilometer. And that average obviously includes large ranch homes in sparsely populated rural expanses. I live in a tightly packed U.S. city, and given that most middle-class people here can’t even dream of affording 1,200 square feet, I don’t think our poor folks can, either. I’m a member of the American middle class, and I live in a studio that’s maybe 375 square feet.
We’ve been locked in class warfare waged from above for decades, and all of this is simply corporate propaganda intended to keep the suckers in line. It’s also very successful.
Joshua Holland is an editor and senior writer with AlterNet.
July 10, 2010
Rand Paul: America’s Poor Are Lucky to Have it so Good!
Joshua Holland
Here’s some authentic frontier gibberish from Rand Paul (via TPM):
“The poor in our country are enormously better off than the rest of the world,” Paul said. “Doesn’t mean we can’t do better, but we have to acknowledge and be proud of our system of capitalism, be proud of our American way.”
Here’s how he got to that conclusion:
One of the important lessons that came out of the Cold War — and this is an important description that I don’t think comes up enough — the Cold War was won by America because the engine of capitalism defeated the engine of socialism. The Soviets used to show a propaganda film — they wanted to show how horrible America was and how our poor were doing so poorly. They filmed a building in the poor section of New York with some broken windows and they said, ‘Oh this is how the poor in America lives.’ But it backfired on them because the Soviet citizens looked at that video closely and they saw flickering color television sets in all those windows.
Like the nonsensical claim that 50 percent of Americans pay no taxes, this is a zombie lie that will never rest. It can’t, because people like Rand Paul aren’t really defending American “capitalism” — they’re defending the great economic inequality that results from capitalism when its not balanced by a real social safety net. It’s axiomatic that the poor have it better off in countries with less inequality and greater ‘transfer payments.’ But more to the point, greater inequality leads to more people living in poverty — and we lead the developed world.
That’s what their “populism” is supporting. Economies with a more equitable distribution of wealth produce fewer millionaires, yes, but many fewer poor folks. So, the Right simply argues that our poor folks have TVs! And dishwashers! They’re doing great!
Half of all American children require food-stamps at some point before they hit 20 — a statistic that would shock the citizens of other advanced countries. But a dedicated consumer culture produces a lot of excess goods. You can get a TV at a yard sale for a dollar. Right now, on Craigslist’s San Francisco site, there are free dishwashers, a freezer, a stereo system and many, many television sets available for nothing. A few days ago, I saw a 50-inch wide-screen TV that would have gone for a few thousand dollars ten years ago sitting on the street with a sign that said, ‘works fine.’ Perhaps Rand Paul, who worships at the Church of Big Business, never heard of the term “planned obsolescence.” It’s right there in his GE Bible.
In my deftly written forthcoming book (DWFB?), I look at one of the silliest of these arguments (in the context of the Right’s well established mythology about European decline). Here’s a little taste:
One of the most entertaining claims to U.S. superiority is this: we live in bigger homes. As the Wall Street Journal was happy to point out, “The average living space for poor American households is 1,200 square feet. In Europe, the average space for all households, not just the poor, is 1,000 square feet.” Case closed!
Well, not really. This is a simple matter of population density: in the EU-15, there are 120 people per kilometer; in the United States, we only have 29 people per kilometer. And that average obviously includes large ranch homes in sparsely populated rural expanses. I live in a tightly packed U.S. city, and given that most middle-class people here can’t even dream of affording 1,200 square feet, I don’t think our poor folks can, either. I’m a member of the American middle class, and I live in a studio that’s maybe 375 square feet.
We’ve been locked in class warfare waged from above for decades, and all of this is simply corporate propaganda intended to keep the suckers in line. It’s also very successful.
Joshua Holland is an editor and senior writer with AlterNet.
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
Rand Paul Flip-Flops on Farm Subsidies
http://www.hillbillyreport.org/diary/1686/rand-paul-flipflops-on-farm-subsidies
Rand Paul Flip-Flops on Farm Subsidies
RDemocrat
Wed Jun 30, 2010
Poor Rand Paul. He thought he would use the fundraising base of his father and cruise to tea-party victory. What he did not depend on however was his extremist views on just about everything being completely exposed by those who are voting. Now, in a state rich with farming some of those statements are coming back to haunt him as rural Kentucky sees that he scorns them as much as everyone else. Of course, in typical McConnell Republican fashion the Mad Doctor is just flip-flopping and floundering.
You see, farmers and the entire Commonwealth of Kentucky benefit from farm subsidies:
Allison Haley, Conway's press secretary, said Kentucky received at least $446 million from the Department of Agriculture last year "through programs that include helping our Kentucky farmers improve water quality, cope with environmental disasters and provide nutritional assistance for women and children.
In federal fiscal year 2009, Kentucky farmers got more than $265 million in commodities subsidies through the U.S. Department of Agriculture, according to a publication from the USDA Farm Service Agency.
So it was quite a surprise when Rand Paul let the cat out of the bag that he wanted to end this money coming into the state he would represent altogether:
In a May 10 appearance on Kentucky Educational Television with other Republican primary candidates, Paul said he was not in favor of agricultural subsidies.
"I don't think federal subsidies of agriculture are a good idea," he said.
Ah, but the powers to be McConnell must have intervened and let the Mad Doctor know that he had once again done the unthinkable, let real Americans know what Republicans really think of them. Since Republican leadership can simply not afford to allow that, Paul was forced to do a little flipping and flopping:
Republican U.S. Senate candidate Rand Paul tempered his opposition to federal farm subsidies Wednesday, saying he is "much more moderate" on the issue than he has been portrayed in the media.
Appearing on WHAS-AM radio in Louisville with host Mandy Connell, Paul did not repeat a previous blanket assertion against farm subsidies.
Moderate?? LOL!! Rand Paul will be called many things in this campaign but moderate will not be one of them. The problem is Paul said a stupid thing on his anti-government crusade and got called out on it. The truth is that Paul is just another lackey cut out of the Mitch McConnell Kentucky Republican mode. Government is only good when it benefits them. Profits are only good when they go to the right people and Americans should just work for peanuts if business sees fit.
The nightmarish world of Rand Paul comes straight from a McConnell wet dream. They would starve the beast and steal governmental protections from Corporations from working Americans. They would end any taxes on the wealthy to pay for anything. Corporate responsibility would be figuring out how to cheat more working Americans out of wages and benefits and farmers would see their subsidies and price controls stolen away.
Luckily we have an alternative to Rand Paul who cares more about the people of this state than making some misled political statement demonizing everything the government does and all of those who look to the federal government for any kind of assistance. Jack Conway offers a real alternative to the lunacy offered up by Rand Paul and his McConnell on steroids vision of the world:
Jack has always been committed to public service. Just after graduating law school he began working on Gov. Paul Patton's 1995 campaign and after the election he began working as Secretary of the Cabinet. Jack managed many high level administrators and developed a close friendship with current State Auditor, Crit Luallen, who taught him how to be an upstanding public servant. In 2002, Jack ran for Congress and narrowly lost to incumbent, Ann Northup, in one of the closest congressional races that year. And in 2007, Jack was elected as the 49th Attorney General of the Commonwealth of Kentucky.
Rand Paul Flip-Flops on Farm Subsidies
RDemocrat
Wed Jun 30, 2010
Poor Rand Paul. He thought he would use the fundraising base of his father and cruise to tea-party victory. What he did not depend on however was his extremist views on just about everything being completely exposed by those who are voting. Now, in a state rich with farming some of those statements are coming back to haunt him as rural Kentucky sees that he scorns them as much as everyone else. Of course, in typical McConnell Republican fashion the Mad Doctor is just flip-flopping and floundering.
You see, farmers and the entire Commonwealth of Kentucky benefit from farm subsidies:
Allison Haley, Conway's press secretary, said Kentucky received at least $446 million from the Department of Agriculture last year "through programs that include helping our Kentucky farmers improve water quality, cope with environmental disasters and provide nutritional assistance for women and children.
In federal fiscal year 2009, Kentucky farmers got more than $265 million in commodities subsidies through the U.S. Department of Agriculture, according to a publication from the USDA Farm Service Agency.
So it was quite a surprise when Rand Paul let the cat out of the bag that he wanted to end this money coming into the state he would represent altogether:
In a May 10 appearance on Kentucky Educational Television with other Republican primary candidates, Paul said he was not in favor of agricultural subsidies.
"I don't think federal subsidies of agriculture are a good idea," he said.
Ah, but the powers to be McConnell must have intervened and let the Mad Doctor know that he had once again done the unthinkable, let real Americans know what Republicans really think of them. Since Republican leadership can simply not afford to allow that, Paul was forced to do a little flipping and flopping:
Republican U.S. Senate candidate Rand Paul tempered his opposition to federal farm subsidies Wednesday, saying he is "much more moderate" on the issue than he has been portrayed in the media.
Appearing on WHAS-AM radio in Louisville with host Mandy Connell, Paul did not repeat a previous blanket assertion against farm subsidies.
Moderate?? LOL!! Rand Paul will be called many things in this campaign but moderate will not be one of them. The problem is Paul said a stupid thing on his anti-government crusade and got called out on it. The truth is that Paul is just another lackey cut out of the Mitch McConnell Kentucky Republican mode. Government is only good when it benefits them. Profits are only good when they go to the right people and Americans should just work for peanuts if business sees fit.
The nightmarish world of Rand Paul comes straight from a McConnell wet dream. They would starve the beast and steal governmental protections from Corporations from working Americans. They would end any taxes on the wealthy to pay for anything. Corporate responsibility would be figuring out how to cheat more working Americans out of wages and benefits and farmers would see their subsidies and price controls stolen away.
Luckily we have an alternative to Rand Paul who cares more about the people of this state than making some misled political statement demonizing everything the government does and all of those who look to the federal government for any kind of assistance. Jack Conway offers a real alternative to the lunacy offered up by Rand Paul and his McConnell on steroids vision of the world:
Jack has always been committed to public service. Just after graduating law school he began working on Gov. Paul Patton's 1995 campaign and after the election he began working as Secretary of the Cabinet. Jack managed many high level administrators and developed a close friendship with current State Auditor, Crit Luallen, who taught him how to be an upstanding public servant. In 2002, Jack ran for Congress and narrowly lost to incumbent, Ann Northup, in one of the closest congressional races that year. And in 2007, Jack was elected as the 49th Attorney General of the Commonwealth of Kentucky.
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
Rand Paul's 'cafeteria constitutionalism'
http://crooksandliars.com/node/37364
Rand Paul's 'cafeteria constitutionalism': He advocates denial of birthright citizenship to immigrant children
David Neiwert
Friday May 28, 2010
Well, we already knew that Rand Paul's brand of "libertarian conservatism" was actually a front for the far-right beliefs he gets from his father -- even though he's done his best to scurry away from the consequences of having revealed that extremism inadvertently when Rachel Maddow put it in a context that mattered -- in this case, the Civil Rights Acts of the 1960s.
But you know it's going to keep bubbling up, nearly every time he opens his mouth. For instance, in a recent interview with an English-language Russian news station recently, Paul held forth on immigration [via Ian Millhiser at ThinkProgress]:
Paul: I recently have been talking more about satellite observation. They say you can sit in front of the store here and a satellite can read the headline on your newspaper. So I think you could also monitor your border with satellites, and then you just have to have some means of intercepting people who come in illegally. You could have helicopters stations positioned every couple of hundred miles.
I think you just have to have some means of intercepting people who come here illegally. You could have helicopter stations positioned every couple of hundred miles. And I think you could control your borders and control your borders within months if you had the willpower to do it. And I think neither party in our country has had the willpower to control our borders.
Q: Why not?
Paul: I don't know. Some of it may be labor force, things like that. But I'm not opposed to letting people come in and work and labor in our country, but what I think we should do is, we shouldn't provide an easy route to citizenship.
A lot of this is about demographics. If you look at new immigrants from Mexico, they register 3-to-1 Democrat. So the Democrat Party's for easy citizenship and for allowing them to vote. I think we need to readdress that.
We’re the only country I know of that allows people to come in illegally, have a baby, and then that baby becomes a citizen. And I think that should stop also.
It's worth noting that Paul is not only opposed to providing a path to citizenship for the undocumented immigrants already here, but he is apparently also opposed to the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. You know, the one that reads:
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.
This is a bit odd, don't you think, for someone who not only constantly cites the Constitution and calls himself a "constitutionalist," but also accuses his opponents of "violating the Constitution" at every turn? Indeed, only earlier in the segment he declared that President Obama's health-care reforms were "unconstitutional."
Note the words that people like Rand Paul never want to use when they talk about this, but which are what we're talking about here -- namely, birthright citizenship.
And contrary to Paul's assertion, there is a long list of nations [predominantly in the Americas] that practice jus soli. Moreover, it's not, as the Wikipedia entry explains, a particular innovation of American law, having its origins in British common law:
Birthright citizenship, as with much United States law, has its roots in English common law. Calvin’s Case, 77 Eng. Rep. 377 (1608), was particularly important as it established that under English common law “a person's status was vested at birth, and based upon place of birth--a person born within the king's dominion owed allegiance to the sovereign, and in turn, was entitled to the king's protection." This same principle was adopted by the newly formed United States, as stated by Supreme Court Justice Noah Haynes Swayne: "All persons born in the allegiance of the king are natural- born subjects, and all persons born in the allegiance of the United States are natural-born citizens. Birth and allegiance go together. Such is the rule of the common law, and it is the common law of this country…since as before the Revolution."
That, of course, hasn't stopped the Nativists who want to either overturn or ignore the Constitution. Indeed, Paul is just echoing the latest efforts of Arizona's immigrant-bashing nativists. And as we noted then:
[T]his is a sick joke. Surveys of undocumented workers have made indelibly clear that they don't come here to have "anchor babies," or to get our free health care, or any of the other fantasies harbored by nativists: they come here for jobs.
Moreover, there's no serious benefit to be had from having your child be born a citizen -- because under American law, you can be deported anyway, and in fact thousands of parents of American birthright-citizen children are deported every year: 100,000 of them over 10 years, to be precise.
There is an exemption available: After the immigrant parent has been present for no less than ten years, he or she may apply for Cancellation of Removal if he/she can prove ten years of good moral character and establish that deportation would create an exceptional hardship to her citizen child. There is an annual cap of 4,000 on the number of illegal immigrants who can be granted such relief, and for the past several years the government has not even reached that cap.
Of course, facts never have been much of an impediment to people like Rand Paul. Except when they make the tactical mistake of appearing on the Rachel Maddow Show.
Rand Paul's 'cafeteria constitutionalism': He advocates denial of birthright citizenship to immigrant children
David Neiwert
Friday May 28, 2010
Well, we already knew that Rand Paul's brand of "libertarian conservatism" was actually a front for the far-right beliefs he gets from his father -- even though he's done his best to scurry away from the consequences of having revealed that extremism inadvertently when Rachel Maddow put it in a context that mattered -- in this case, the Civil Rights Acts of the 1960s.
But you know it's going to keep bubbling up, nearly every time he opens his mouth. For instance, in a recent interview with an English-language Russian news station recently, Paul held forth on immigration [via Ian Millhiser at ThinkProgress]:
Paul: I recently have been talking more about satellite observation. They say you can sit in front of the store here and a satellite can read the headline on your newspaper. So I think you could also monitor your border with satellites, and then you just have to have some means of intercepting people who come in illegally. You could have helicopters stations positioned every couple of hundred miles.
I think you just have to have some means of intercepting people who come here illegally. You could have helicopter stations positioned every couple of hundred miles. And I think you could control your borders and control your borders within months if you had the willpower to do it. And I think neither party in our country has had the willpower to control our borders.
Q: Why not?
Paul: I don't know. Some of it may be labor force, things like that. But I'm not opposed to letting people come in and work and labor in our country, but what I think we should do is, we shouldn't provide an easy route to citizenship.
A lot of this is about demographics. If you look at new immigrants from Mexico, they register 3-to-1 Democrat. So the Democrat Party's for easy citizenship and for allowing them to vote. I think we need to readdress that.
We’re the only country I know of that allows people to come in illegally, have a baby, and then that baby becomes a citizen. And I think that should stop also.
It's worth noting that Paul is not only opposed to providing a path to citizenship for the undocumented immigrants already here, but he is apparently also opposed to the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. You know, the one that reads:
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.
This is a bit odd, don't you think, for someone who not only constantly cites the Constitution and calls himself a "constitutionalist," but also accuses his opponents of "violating the Constitution" at every turn? Indeed, only earlier in the segment he declared that President Obama's health-care reforms were "unconstitutional."
Note the words that people like Rand Paul never want to use when they talk about this, but which are what we're talking about here -- namely, birthright citizenship.
And contrary to Paul's assertion, there is a long list of nations [predominantly in the Americas] that practice jus soli. Moreover, it's not, as the Wikipedia entry explains, a particular innovation of American law, having its origins in British common law:
Birthright citizenship, as with much United States law, has its roots in English common law. Calvin’s Case, 77 Eng. Rep. 377 (1608), was particularly important as it established that under English common law “a person's status was vested at birth, and based upon place of birth--a person born within the king's dominion owed allegiance to the sovereign, and in turn, was entitled to the king's protection." This same principle was adopted by the newly formed United States, as stated by Supreme Court Justice Noah Haynes Swayne: "All persons born in the allegiance of the king are natural- born subjects, and all persons born in the allegiance of the United States are natural-born citizens. Birth and allegiance go together. Such is the rule of the common law, and it is the common law of this country…since as before the Revolution."
That, of course, hasn't stopped the Nativists who want to either overturn or ignore the Constitution. Indeed, Paul is just echoing the latest efforts of Arizona's immigrant-bashing nativists. And as we noted then:
[T]his is a sick joke. Surveys of undocumented workers have made indelibly clear that they don't come here to have "anchor babies," or to get our free health care, or any of the other fantasies harbored by nativists: they come here for jobs.
Moreover, there's no serious benefit to be had from having your child be born a citizen -- because under American law, you can be deported anyway, and in fact thousands of parents of American birthright-citizen children are deported every year: 100,000 of them over 10 years, to be precise.
There is an exemption available: After the immigrant parent has been present for no less than ten years, he or she may apply for Cancellation of Removal if he/she can prove ten years of good moral character and establish that deportation would create an exceptional hardship to her citizen child. There is an annual cap of 4,000 on the number of illegal immigrants who can be granted such relief, and for the past several years the government has not even reached that cap.
Of course, facts never have been much of an impediment to people like Rand Paul. Except when they make the tactical mistake of appearing on the Rachel Maddow Show.
Sunday, May 30, 2010
Rand Paul Thinks Obama Is “Un-American” to Be So Mean to B.P.
http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2010/05/rand-paul-thinks-obama-is-un-american-to-be-so-mean-to-bp.html
Rand Paul Thinks Obama Is “Un-American” to Be So Mean to B.P.
by Juli Weiner
May 21, 2010
Did Rand Paul watch the news before he became the news? He has only existed—if we’re going to use the metric of mass consciousness—for like two weeks, and already, there have been so many amateur missteps. Following this week’s ace decision to problematize the Civil Rights Act, the Kentucky Republican senatorial candidate went on Good Morning America today to discuss how “un-American” this President Obama was for blaming B.P. for the oil spill. Accidents happen! It says so in the Constitution, probably.
He tells George Stephanopoulos, “What I don’t like from the president’s administration is this sort of ‘I’ll put my boot heel on the throat of B.P.’ I think that sounds really un-American in his criticism of business.” He adds later, “It’s always part of this blame-game society where it’s always gotta be someone’s fault instead of the fact that maybe sometimes accidents happen.” Stephanopoulos responds by asking Paul if he thinks B.P. is regulated enough, to which Paul replies that he doesn’t know, although there are “hundreds of pages of regulation of drilling in the ocean and I think most of that’s justified.” Hundreds of pages! That sounds pretty regulated, what with all those pages.
Rand Paul Thinks Obama Is “Un-American” to Be So Mean to B.P.
by Juli Weiner
May 21, 2010
Did Rand Paul watch the news before he became the news? He has only existed—if we’re going to use the metric of mass consciousness—for like two weeks, and already, there have been so many amateur missteps. Following this week’s ace decision to problematize the Civil Rights Act, the Kentucky Republican senatorial candidate went on Good Morning America today to discuss how “un-American” this President Obama was for blaming B.P. for the oil spill. Accidents happen! It says so in the Constitution, probably.
He tells George Stephanopoulos, “What I don’t like from the president’s administration is this sort of ‘I’ll put my boot heel on the throat of B.P.’ I think that sounds really un-American in his criticism of business.” He adds later, “It’s always part of this blame-game society where it’s always gotta be someone’s fault instead of the fact that maybe sometimes accidents happen.” Stephanopoulos responds by asking Paul if he thinks B.P. is regulated enough, to which Paul replies that he doesn’t know, although there are “hundreds of pages of regulation of drilling in the ocean and I think most of that’s justified.” Hundreds of pages! That sounds pretty regulated, what with all those pages.
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