Archive for the ‘Rand Paul’ Category

After last month’s filibuster of the Obama administration’s new drone policy, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul has received a lot of attention from both libertarians and Republicans. With Senator Reid looking to introduce new gun legislation soon, Senator Paul isn’t afraid to use the same method to get his opinions out there. Late last month Senators Paul, Mike Lee, and Ted Cruz all sent a letter to the Senate Majority leader. The letter threatened to filibuster the new proposed bill that would expand background checks and crack down on interstate gun trading.

But on Monday Rand Paul and 12 other GOP Senators will send a follow up letter showing their support for a potential filibuster. According to Politico,

Reid may be able to break a filibuster with bipartisan support, which would obviate the need to do an end run around Paul’s group. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) has said he won’t support a filibuster if Reid promises to allow for amendments on the floor.

In the letter due to be sent Monday, a carbon copy of the first missive, Paul and his expanded group of allies reiterate that they “intend to oppose any legislation that would infringe on the American people’s constitutional right to bear arms, or their ability to exercise this right without being subjected to government surveillance.”

The Gun Owners of America, a small group that has risen in influence because of its strict adherence to a pro-gun line, has pressured senators and the National Rifle Association to back Paul, Cruz and Lee.

“If, you are an NRA member, contact them,” GOA wrote in an action alert sent to its own members, some of whom are also in the NRA, on April 1. “Urge them to join with us in supporting the Paul-Cruz-Lee filibuster. That means they should tell senators to oppose the motion to proceed to any gun control vehicle, and to oppose cloture on the motion to proceed to any gun control vehicle.”

In addition to Paul, Lee, Cruz, Rubio and Moran, the Republican who have signed the second letter are Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, Richard Burr of North Carolina, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Mike Enzi of Wyoming, Jim Risch and Mike Crapo of Idaho, Dan Coats of Indiana and Pat Roberts of Kansas.

“We will oppose the motion to proceed on any legislation that will serve as a vehicle for any additional gun restrictions,” they write.

Perhaps once Senator Reid sees that several of his co-workers disagree with this new proposed bill, he will put a stop to the new measure. With 13 senators now willing to stand up for Americans’ 2nd amendment rights in filibuster style, it is clear that we have elected officials who care about protecting our interests. Hopefully their dedication to the issue is a sign to their colleagues that the 2nd amendment is not one that can be ignored.

Hugo Chavez just died, and many of us said “good riddance” to a tyrant who defrauded his own people, intimidated his political opposition and left his economy and country in disarray. Senator Rand Paul seemed to be reminding us: “Why would we want a tyrant in America, too?” That was the point of Paul’s nearly 13-hour filibuster on the U.S. Senate floor last week.
Yes, Barack Obama is cool and hip and fancies himself “a man of the people.” But with each hour Paul kept up his filibuster, you could feel Obama’s popularity melting away. Paul seemed to be saying: “Does it really matter if he’s hip if he wants to kill you, an American citizen, on American soil? Does it matter if he’s cool and the kind of guy you’d like to have a beer with, if he wants you dead without a trial?”
In the end, Paul won. Obama blinked. But Paul’s filibuster accomplished much more than forcing the President to admit he cannot kill Americans on American soil without a trial.
Paul proved the Tea Party is alive and well — and America’s best hope to stop Obama from shredding our Constitution and destroying the America we love.
Paul proved “the emperor has no clothes.” This was a big public embarrassment for Obama.
He made liberals, the American Civil Liberties Union and the media look foolish for never saying a word about something so important as our right not to be assassinated by our own President.
Paul showed people like John McCain and Lindsay Graham how a U.S. Senator in the opposition is supposed to act, how to stand up to the President while he violates our Constitution. And they sure felt embarrassed: See how they viciously attacked Paul after he showed them up.
And in 13 hours, Paul got out of his father Ron Paul’s very large shadow, became his own man and became a leading contender for President of the United States in 2016.
We must never forget that Rand Paul had to conduct a 13-hour filibuster and put a national spotlight on Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder before they were willing to publicly concede that they can’t kill Americans on American soil without ever hearing the charges, without ever facing your accusers, without hearing your rights, without a lawyer, without a trial.
Paul made Obama look like King George. And the President’s ratings not only collapsed, they’ve continued to go down ever since.
But I think this was about much more than drones. I think this was symbolic. Paul is a brilliant strategist. This was about Obama’s nonstop abuse of power, disregard for the U.S. Constitution and destruction of the U.S. economy.
Maybe this woke up the sleeping giant: the American people. Maybe this woke up Congress. Maybe this woke up the ACLU. Maybe this woke up the media. Hey, a guy can dream, can’t he?
In the future, I suggest a series of nonstop filibusters to shine a light on what Obama is doing to America.
Let’s filibuster until we find out what happened in Benghazi, Libya, to four American heroes that Obama allowed to die, without giving them the proper security before the attack or the proper rescue attempt during the attack.
Let’s filibuster until we find out why, if America is so broke we can’t afford White House tours or afford to keep illegal alien felons in prison, then how come we have hundreds of millions of dollars to spare for Muslim Brotherhood radicals in Egypt who hate America, want to destroy Israel and terrorize and murder Christians on a daily basis?
Let’s filibuster until we find out why Obama is so desperate about disarming Americans, banning our assault rifles and taxing our bullets, yet at the same time Obama’s Homeland Security is buying record quantities of assault rifles, armored vehicles and enough bullets for a 30-year war and building a private civilian army that answers only to Obama.
And perhaps most importantly, let’s filibuster about why Obama and the media are able to keep calling this economy “in recovery” and report to us that unemployment is “improving,” at the same time disposable income just suffered the biggest drop in 54 years, homelessness in New York City is the highest since the 1929 Great Depression, food stamp use just hit another all-time record (an unimaginable 20 percent of eligible Americans are now on food stamps), and there are a record 89,304,000 able-bodied, working-age Americans unemployed. Incidentally, while the Federal government claims 236,000 new jobs were added last month, this statistic shows that 296,000 jobs have been lost since January.
By the way, Paul, this last one about the economy is so important, and the lies we are being told so massive, I suggest at least a 48 hour-filibuster.
I’m Wayne Allyn Root for PersonalLiberty.com. I’m headed to the airport to fly to Washington, D.C. I am honored to be one of the invited speakers at CPAC (The Conservative Political Action Conference). I’ll be joining an exclusive group of speakers that includes Senators Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and Mike Lee; Governors Rick Perry, Scott Walker and Bobby Jindal; former Vice Presidential candidates Sarah Palin and Paul Ryan; Donald Trump; and Dr. Ben Carson. What an honor. See you right back here next week. God bless America.

Looks like El Magnifico has sequestered something else, altogether, in one of his now typical tyrant tantrums….yet another trick to abuse.

Air Force Times
By Brian Everstine and Aaron Mehta – Staff writers
As scrutiny and debate over the use of remotely piloted aircraft (RPA) by the American military increased last month, the Air Force reversed a policy of sharing the number of airstrikes launched from RPAs in Afghanistan and quietly scrubbed those statistics from previous releases kept on their website.

Last October, Air Force Central Command started tallying weapons releases from RPAs, broken down into monthly updates. At the time, AFCENT spokeswoman Capt. Kim Bender said the numbers would be put out every month as part of a service effort to “provide more detailed information on RPA ops in Afghanistan.”

The Air Force maintained that policy for the statistics reports for November, December and January. But the February numbers, released March 7, contained empty space where the box of RPA statistics had previously been.

Scrubbed

Click here to see the original December 2012 and January 2013 statistics and the ones apparently loaded online Feb. 22.

Additionally, monthly reports hosted on the Air Force website have had the RPA data removed — and recently.

Those files still contained the RPA data as of Feb. 16, according to archived web pages accessed via Archive.org. Metadata included in the new, RPA-less versions of the reports show the files were all created Feb. 22.

Defense Department spokesman Cmdr. Bill Speaks said the department was not involved in the decision to remove the statistics. AFCENT did not respond to a request for comment by press time.

The data removal coincided with increased scrutiny on RPA policy caused by President Barack Obama’s nomination of John Brennan to head the CIA. Brennan faced opposition in the Senate over the use of RPAs and his defense of their legality in his role as Obama’s deputy national security adviser.

On Feb. 20, two days before the metadata indicates the scrubbed files were created, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., sent a letter to Brennan saying that he would filibuster the nomination over concerns about using RPA strikes inside the U.S., a threat he carried out for over 12 hours on March 6 (Brennan was confirmed the next day).

That same day, Sen. Lindsay Graham, R-S.C., told a crowd in South Carolina that strikes by American RPAs have killed 4,700 people.

“Sometimes you hit innocent people, and I hate that, but we’re at war, and we’ve taken out some very senior members of al-Qaida,” Graham was quoted by the Patch website as saying.

Sen. Paul questions the Department of Energy’s commitment to protecting consumer choice during consideration of Appliance/Light Bulb Energy-Efficiency Legislation