SHUT HIM DOWN
05.31.1510:25 PM ET
The Patriot Act Just Made Rand Paul GOP Enemy Number One
The Republican establishment and the libertarian senator were already at odds. Then came the fight over government surveillance.

Among many of his Republican colleagues, Sen. Rand Paul is, for now, enemy number one.

The Patriot Act is dead,(at least temporarily) and his fellow Republicans are blaming the Kentucky senator for the problem. He is grandstanding for political purposes, they say—and endangering national security in the process.

For a major Republican presidential candidate, Paul has certainly alienated a lot of Republicans—especially hawks who believe in strong surveillance authorities for the intelligence community. Or, you might think, Paul has carved out a unique segment in the GOP field.

At midnight on Monday, three major surveillance provisions contained within the Patriot Act expired. Paul took procedural steps to block any faster consideration of the USA Freedom Act, which would have continued but reformed those provisions.

“I don’t stand with Rand,” Republican Sen. Mark Kirk told The Daily Beast, flipping Paul’s campaign slogan. “I disagree with him. I think we should not allow the program to be interrupted.”

In a rare Sunday night vote for the Senate, called in a foiled attempt to address the issue before the Patriot Act provisions expired, fellow Republicans laid into Paul.

“I just saw a tweet from Sen. Paul saying, ‘Take a selfie of yourself when you’re watching me on the floor tonight.’ In case you missed it, take a look at it,” Sen. John McCain, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said dismissively. (McCain later joked, “I’m not good-looking enough to enjoy that.”)

“Unfortunately I think it’s part of the presidential campaign,” said Sen. John Cornyn, the number two Republican in the Senate. “This really does raise the risk to the public. It does eliminate one of the tools that the intelligence community has to identify homegrown terrorists. It just seems to me at least reckless to not allow at least a temporary continuation of the bill while we have this debate. But that’s not the way it’s working.”

   I don’t stand with Rand,” Republican Sen. Mark Kirk told The Daily Beast, flipping Paul’s campaign slogan. “I disagree with him. I think we should not allow the program to be interrupted.”

Paul insiders insist that there was no political calculus behind Sunday’s event, but nevertheless demand anonymity when describing this matter of conscience.

“There are certain things that are a matter of principle,” one senior Paul adviser told The Daily Beast. The adviser added that even if Paul did believe his opposition to NSA spying might negatively impact his success in the Republican presidential primary, that wouldn’t have stopped him from blocking the measure.

The three provisions that expired at midnight include Section 215, which was the legal basis for the NSA’s bulk collection of metadata; the provision on roving wiretaps; and a section authorizing surveillance against so-called lone wolves.

But Paul’s actions won’t have lasting effect, from the perspective of the law.

While the authorities are expiring, the expectation is that the Senate will return later this week to reauthorize sections of the Patriot Act, albeit with reforms and restrictions outlined in the House-passed USA Freedom Act. In the meantime, backdoor provisions and alternate collection schemes will allow U.S. spies to continue surveilling important targets.

Politically, that might not matter.

The fact is, Paul killed controversial parts of the Patriot Act—bumper stickers aren’t big enough for the details about how long their death lasted.

“We should not be debating modifying an illegal program,” Paul wrote in an Op-Ed for TIME on Saturday. “We should simply end this illegal program.”

As he spoke on the Senate floor, Paul tweeted, using the hashtag #endNSAspying—and, at least once, #endNSA, something he said earlier this month he does not want to do. Paul’s supporters sent him words of encouragement: “Keep it up! We are listening!” They also sent photos of themselves watching his speech on the Senate floor. The process even yielded some “#babiesforRand.”

Paul’s human-roadblock strategy has its benefits: It puts him in the spotlight fighting a battle in which he has remained consistent throughout his political career. And perhaps more important than that, the burst of attention comes both after a period of doubt among some of Paul’s more staunchly libertarian supporters and, conveniently, while he is promoting his latest book.

Over the past year, as Paul has traveled the country campaigning, a central question has followed him: To what degree will he sacrifice the “libertarian-ish” principles that took him from his Bowling Green ophthalmology practice and into the United States Senate in order to appeal to the broader GOP electorate?

Senator Paul would not exist without the supporters he inherited from his father, Ron Paul, but he has let them down with his compromises, like signing the Iran letter and voicing his support for the Obama administration’s drone policy.

Paul’s opposition to the Patriot Act, despite the risk it carries, is a nod to those supporters that he is not leaving them behind, not that he could afford to lose them.

Paul’s surveillance-ending stunt places him happily in opposition to the Obama administration and his rivals in the Republican primary field. Chris Christie, Jeb Bush, and Marco Rubio favor a robust metadata collection program. Ted Cruz was an early co-sponsor of the USA Freedom Act, which would reform the Patriot Act and end the government’s bulk collection of American metadata.

“I recognize that there is nothing you very kind folks in the media like more than Republican-on-Republican violence. You would like me to say something negative about my friend Rand, but I have no intention of doing so,” Cruz told reporters Sunday night.

That said, Cruz opposes Paul’s actions in the Senate, which forced the (brief) expiration of surveillance authorities.

“I disagree with allowing key provisions of federal law to expire that allow the national security team to target radical Islamic terrorists,” Cruz said

Back in November, Paul and Cruz battled over the USA Freedom Act, with Paul ultimately winning when the bill was defeated. The measure didn’t go far enough to fix the problem, Paul argued. Cruz countered that to fix the problem, you had to do it from within the existing system.

But Paul may now be politically vulnerable. Were a national security issue to arise, his critics could argue he was the roadblock to preventing the act’s passage. It’s a vulnerability he acknowledges.

On the Senate floor, he suggested, “Some of them, I think, secretly want there to be an attack on the United States so they can blame it on me.”

—With additional reporting by Alexa Corse.

In PATRIOT Act Fight, Rand Paul Is the Jon Snow of Congress
And now his watch is ended.

Robby Soave|Jun. 1, 2015 12:35 am

Watching Sen. Rand Paul do everything he could to thwart the combined forces of big government Republicans, Democrats, and the Obama administration in their quest to violate the Constitution and maintain snooping powers over the American people vis a vis PATRIOT Act renewal, it occurred to me that Rand and his allies are the Jon Snows of Congress. The filibuster is his Valyrian steel sword.

This is a Game of Thrones analogy, and it holds up remarkably well, particularly if you consider recent episodes of the HBO show, which cover the happenings of the fourth and fifth books. (Yes, Game of Thrones is rife with political subtext, and elaborate comparisons between the War of the Five Kings and the race for the White House have been made over and over again. The analogy I’m about to make is still fresh, to my knowledge.)

In the world of Game of Thrones, Jon Snow is the newly-elected Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch, an ancient order tasked with defending a gigantic wall and forestalling the invasion of evil ice demons from the north. Petty politics and doubts about the true nature of the enemy mar the effectiveness of the Watch, which is brimming with unsavory characters—many of whom are criminals. Some of them committed sex crimes. Sound familiar?

Jon Snow’s problem is that he has to convince these unscrupulous devils to ignore their instincts and make common cause with the Wildlings—the native human inhabitants of the north. Remember those evil ice demons I mentioned? Well, they possess the ability to reanimate the dead and conscript them into military service. Jon Snow, to his credit, reasons that it is better to make peace with the Wildlings than to battle their zombified corpses. He’s right: we know he’s right. But all-too many of his brothers in the Night’s Watch don’t see it that way.

Many of them mock him, even though their own opinions are ludicrous. Sens. Lindsey Graham and John McCain are clearly the Janos Slynt and Alliser Thorne of the Senate; sniveling, unprincipled naysayers who challenge Jon Snow at every turn. Slynt is constantly promising that his rich friends in King’s Landing will make Jon pay for crossing him—even though Flynt is a vile, despised man.

Jon is under no illusion that an alliance with the Wildlings would be anything other than strained. Nevertheless, he knows that he must try. His brothers, unfortunately, can’t look past the fact that Jon is expressing leniency toward Wildlings. He even spared the Wildling King, Mance Rayder, from a much worse fate—which obviously calls to mind Paul’s more measured tone toward real-world Wildling leader Edward Snowden.

Whereas Jon has Samwell Tarly, Dolorous Edd, and Grenn, Paul has Reps. Justin Amash and Thomas Massie. Indeed, in season four of the show, Grenn even singlehandedly defended the passage under the wall while Jon attended to other matters—much like Amash kept guard in Congress last weekend while everyone else was away.

When a sworn brother of the Night’s Watch dies, these words are recited at his funeral: “And now his watch is ended.” At midnight last night, some portions of the Patriot Act expired—Paul’s relentless stand against illegal government spying was (partially and temporarily) successful. Let’s hope his valor wins him more thanks than Jon Snow seems to be getting. If not from the perfumed lords and ladies, then at least among the smallfolk.

Refreshing to say the least!
Just proof AGAIN that the 'dem & rep' machine are in lock step with each other....except for Paul.

no saying he's right or wrong...agree or disagree......just INDEPENDENT from the herd!

REFRESHING! imho

waiting for the next false flag via the big government reps and dems.

FEAR is the greatest tool to CONTROL the masses!!

Just ask Hitler!!

Quoted Text

"A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself within. The essential causes of Rome’s decline lay in her people, her morals, her class struggle, her failing trade, her bureaucratic despotism, her stifling taxes, her consuming wars."

Will Durant, “Caesar and Christ.”

Great book!!

This reminds me of how, back in the day, the other state legislators would get so angry at Jim Tedisco for voting against pay raises. They kept saying he was grandstanding because he knew he was going to get the raise anyway. I always wanted to tell them all, "not if you ALL vote against it, obviously."

Quoted from bumblethru

Refreshing to say the least!
Just proof AGAIN that the 'dem & rep' machine are in lock step with each other....except for Paul.

no saying he's right or wrong...agree or disagree......just INDEPENDENT from the herd!

REFRESHING! imho

It's too bad that you don't vote, or you could vote for Rand Paul.
But as you always tell us... they are all the same.

Because one Rand Paul thread wasn't enough.

Kinda like Ron Paul wasn't enough, now we have baby Paul!

Quoted Text

Rand Paul Is Right: Republican Neocons Created ISIS


Posted:  06/10/2015 1:19 pm EDT    Updated:  1 hour ago  


Senator Rand Paul is spot on.

The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) was created and is fueled by Mr. Paul's lobotomized neocon rivals.

In other words, to paraphrase Walt Kelly's Pogo about the Vietnam War, Mr. Paul's foreign policy detractors have met the enemy, and they are them!

With the predictability of the sun rising in the East and setting in the West, power vacuums in primitive political cultures give birth to extremists--religious or otherwise. There are no exceptions. Ruthlessness and fanaticism flourish in a Hobbesian state of nature.

Israel gave birth to Hamas by crippling the Palestinian Liberation Organization and Yasser Arafat's dominant Fatah faction.

Hezbollah emerged from a power vacuum in Lebanon.

Al Qaeda and Taliban were created by a power vacuum in Afghanistan following the ouster of Soviet troops in 1989.

Iran's radical Shiite regime is the offspring of the power vacuum created by the 1979 overthrow of the Shah.

Despite the obvious, Senator Paul's deluded Republican opponents bugled for the overthrow of Iraq's secular President Saddam Hussein in 2003 heedless of the power vacuum that would ensue. Saddam was a fierce antagonist of Iran's ruling mullahs, against whom he had warred (with United States support) for eight years, 1980-1988. No-fly zones and sanctions had crippled Saddam's capacity to threaten the United States. But the neocons insisted on an invasion and the obliteration of Saddam and the ruling Baath Party to save the world from imaginary weapons of mass destruction and to erect a model democracy for the region. After Saddam's ouster and death, Iraq predictably became convulsed by internecine warfare and strife between Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds featuring an unstable and extremist sectarian central government allied with Iran. A splinter group of Al Qaeda (which itself was armed and trained by the United States to fight the Soviet Union in Afghanistan), ISIS was born by a United States generated power vacuum in Iraq. ISIS also took root and grew from a complementary power vacuum in Syria, which neocons fortified by urging the overthrow of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and training Sunni rebels.

Undeterred by their predictable multi-trillion dollar debacle in Iraq, Senator Paul's neocon detractors idiotically championed war against Libya's secular Muammar Gaddafi after he had abandoned WMD and support for international terrorism. The neocons supported Islamic radicals in the overthrow and murder Gaddafi, which was followed by the plunder of his vast conventional arsenal by Islamic radicals. A power vacuum predictably followed, which ISIS exploited to gain a menacing toehold in Libya.

Neocons then placed their staggering stupidity on steroids. They recklessly armed cowardly and inept opponents of ISIS knowing that the weapons would be captured or sold to the enemy--a second edition of the arms we supplied South Vietnam which quickly found their way to the Viet Cong or North Vietnamese. Emblematic is a June 5, 2015 report in Business Insider corroborating that U.S. Humvees captured by ISIS from the Iraqi army have been used in waves of suicide bombings across both Syria and Iraq.

Neocons also created a fetching calling card for ISIS recruitment. They vastly inflated its military capabilities and danger to the United States and the region. That image of omnipotence predictably excited impressionable youths to join because of the neocon engendered perception that ISIS was the New York Yankees of international terrorism. ISIS ranks swell each time a Republican neocon hyperventilates.

South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham is characteristic. On Fox, he bettered the instruction of Chicken Little in operatically insisting that ISIS was on the verge of world conquest:

"[T]hey're intending to come here. So, I will not let this president suggest to the American people we can outsource our security and this is not about our safety. There is no way in hell you can form an army on the ground to go into Syria, to destroy ISIL without a substantial American component. And to destroy ISIL, you have to kill or capture their leaders, take the territory they hold back, cut off their financing and destroy their capability to regenerate.

"This is a war we're fighting, it is not a counterterrorism operation! This is not Somalia; this is not Yemen; this is a turning point in the war on terror. Our strategy will fail yet again. This president needs to rise to the occasion before we all get killed back here at home."

"[I]f they survive our best shot, this is the last best chance, to knock him out, then they will open the gates of hell to spill out on the world. This is not a Sunni versus Sunni problem, this is ISIL versus mankind."

Notwithstanding Lindsey Graham and fellow neocons, I would wager not a single American has lost a wink of sleep worrying about ISIS attacking the United States.

Of them all, only Rand Paul has earned the accolade of Rudyard Kipling's poem If...

"If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you...you'll be a Man my son."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/.....txtlnkusaolp00000592