Rand Paul is doing an old style filibuster on the Senate floor, in opposition to John Brennan's nomination to be CIA Director. Not satisfied with using drones to kill US citizens overseas, the administration believes it can use drones to kill US citizens on american soil. http://www.cnn.com/2013/03/05/politics/obama-drones-cia/index.html So Rand Paul is standing up in the senate in opposition to the threat to civil liberties and the unconstitutionality of the notion the president can order the execution (via drone strike) of our fellow citizens without due process. Paul announced he would talk and talk and talk for as long as it takes.
Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) joined the filibuster just before 3 p.m., giving Paul a break after more than three hours of speaking. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) then took over for Lee just after 3:10 p.m. "You must surely be making Jimmy Stewart smile," he said. Paul resumed speaking around 3:45 p.m, and the filibuster went bipartisan just before 4:00 pm, when Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) joined in.
what'd he talk about? Did he actually talk about the drone issue, or go with the fillibuster of just talking to talk. Those always amused me, the reading from the phonebook/dictionary type.
He did a lot of Alice in Wonderland. But he's talking a lot about Liberty, Freedoms, and proper order of things.
Saxby Chambliss helping out now. By helping out, I mean they ask permission to ask a question. Paul gets the floor back when they're done asking. Instead of simply asking a question, the guys go on to speak for minutes at a time, allowing Paul to have a bathroom break, etc.
Fucking. Awesome. This filibuster should have been for Chuck Hagel. Also, did anyone see Ted Cruz fillet Eric Holder on whether or not he thought the government had a right to target a citizen with a drone in the borders of the United States who didn't represent an immediate, clear and present danger to the populace? He hammered him for half an hour until he said "no". Freaking great.
Rand Paul (R) would say this even against a Republican president. Wyden (D) is doing just that, against a president of his own party. The rest you named (Lee, Cruz, Rubio) have no history of being civil libertarians and are doing this to score points against Obama, having discovered this weakness. Re-elect Wyden. Also, Hagel was a great choice by Obama.
Domestic drone spying is coming. I remember when police first started using helicopters in Southern California. (The fucks shone a spotlight on me next to my home once while they were passing by at night.) Domestic drone routine attacks are not coming, due to cost, except in Dorner-type situations, when the police fully intend to execute someone and burn down his house. A drone would be cheaper than a siege, but then, so would an attack by a manned helicopter. I don't expect Obama to attack anyone domestically with a drone, but he is allowing police state methods to establish precedents on the books for years, making it nice and easy for the next Bush Republican to actually use the capability. That's why it needs to be opposed. The next Bush will declare a national emergency and start using what Obama set up for him.
The rest actually do have a history of being civil libertarians. Tea party guys. The rest of the democrats are disgustingly bad (more so than usual) on this issue.
Any police officer already has this authority (with a gun) when they deem there is a deadly threat. I don't know what really is much different. In fact each citizen does too. We are dealing with theory only, there hasn't been a drone attack in the US and I doubt there ever will be... there are just better ways to deal with it when we can have people on the ground. Seems like a monumental waste of time to even discuss the point, and sad one person can waste a full day of time in Washington when there are so many more important things to address.
Most naive post ever. Please enlighten us as to what is more important to address than a President's claim that he can kill American citizens without due process?
The guy in charge of a S.W.A.T. team can order his sniper to take out a criminal while the crime is in progress. Some people are suggesting it's the same sort of thing. However, the S.W.A.T. team is police. NOT the federal government and armed forces.
