First, let me applaud Powerline for having the courage to introduce what will almost surely be the Establishment spin on Rand Paul’s filibuster. That they reacted so quickly is probably a tactical error — the play was to let the huzzahs die down a bit, then profess to “analyze” the “likely effects” of the maneuver dispassionately and pragmatically in the context of future partisan electoral battles — but in the blog business, it’s sometimes hard to hold your fire, as any of us who do this understand (and have been victimized on occasion as a result).
So. To begin. Let’s look at how the Paul filibuster is going to be framed, and then we can address the why (as if that’s even necessary at this point). The first thing that should strike you is the title of the piece by Paul Mirengoff, “Rand Paul’s filibuster — is it grandstanding or something worse?” — which begins by placing the filibuster in the realm of the disingenuous before allowing that it may in fact prove to be something even worse than empty political showmanship. What isn’t allowed — at least in the title — is that Senator Paul (and with him Senators Cruz, Lee, Toomey, Barrasso, and others, including at least one Democrat) was engaging in a procedural maneuver that was designed to draw attention to what he and others actually believe is a real constitutional concern, namely, the position taken by the Justice Department on the limits of executive power as a matter not constitutional interpretation.
Mirengoff:
I agree with John’s analysis of Rand Paul’s filibuster of John Brennan’s nomination. Paul purports to be filibustering in response to Eric Holder’s statements about the circumstances under which the U.S. might launch a drone attack against citizens here at home, and the constitutionality of such attacks. But, as John showed, Holder’s position in his response on this issue, as set forth in a letter to Paul, is correct.
Moreover, in his testimony today, Holder agreed with Ted Cruz that drone attacks on U.S. citizens here at home are unconstitutional unless the citizen in question poses an imminent danger. To be sure, Cruz had to drag the answer out of Holder, but there it is. Does Paul agree with Cruz and Holder? Or does he believe that it would be unconstitutional to take out a citizen in the U.S. who was about to engage in terrorism?
Note the positioning here: Holder’s position, as set forth in the letter to Paul, is correct, we’re told — and we know this because John Hinderaker makes the case where Holder really did not. So of course, this begs the question: In his letter, Holder refused to reveal the constitutional principles upon which he would advise the President to deal with such “hypotheticals,” and as Paul (and in particular, Mike Lee and Ted Cruz) pointed out at length, because we have no documentation providing the contours of Holder’s legal thinking — several of the Senators contended that “imminent” was being redefined far too broadly by Holder, while others noted that the way we use drone strikes overseas against Americans who have joined forces with Al Qaeda is the only real referent we have with respect to the practice, and there were a number of questions Senator Paul posed about the program, the selection process, the determination of imminence, etc., collateral targets, etc that remained unanswered, and would, if transferred to a domestic program, violate due process protections — we therefore must rely on the Administration and a Department of Justice when it says, essentially, “trust us, we would never abuse our powers in a way that could trouble established Constitutional law.”
Unless it was, say, with respect to gun running. Or the Appointments Clause. Or religious protection issues.
Further, Mirengoff wishes to gloss over Holder’s utter and transparent reluctance to give up any ground on the breadth of what he would consider proper executive power. That is to say, there’s a reason Cruz had “drag the answer out of Holder,” and it is precisely because Holder’s final “no” took such arm-twisting to bring out — given the straightforward nature of the question (can the President order a drone strike on a US citizen when the threat is not imminent, in the legal sense, as determined and approved by a chain of sign-offs by various agencies?) — that Paul then required something more than just a kind of coaxed out promise: he and other conservative, TEA Party Senators wanted to see the legal reasoning behind the DOJ’s position on domestic drone deployment and usage.
This, it seems to me, is entirely appropriate. And far from “grandstanding” simply employs the “trust but verify” advice of Ronald Reagan. Raising the question, why does this attempt at getting specific legal reasoning out of the Federal Government’s own lawyers strike anyone — particular Republicans who have been repeatedly burned by the actions of an imperial President — as somehow unnecessary or even untoward?
Mirengoff continues:
[…] [Paul’s] filibuster is misguided. If Paul agrees with Holder and Cruz, then why is he filibustering Brennan? If he disagrees, then he is unserious about the threat posed by terrorism.
I suspect, as Jonathan Tobin does, that Paul’s real beef is with U.S. anti-terrorism policy in general and the use of drones overseas in particular. I fear that, like his father, Paul’s underlying objection is to what he has called the “perpetual war” against Islamist terrorists.
Being more politically astute then Ron Paul, the junior Senator from Kentucky has manufactured an issue out of domestic use of drones — a non-occurrence so far. He understands that many conservatives will be inclined to rally around him on this (non)issue, in part because their imagination will run wild and in part out of knee-jerk opposition to President Obama and Eric Holder.
This is specious thinking — and worse yet, it is topped off by speculation that calls into question Paul’s motives, and by extension, the motives of those who supported his filibuster. Either that, or it suggests that those who supported Paul’s filibuster were too unsophisticated to glean his real motives, and so are dupes of a very special kind, the “teabagger” equivalent of the left’s useful idiots.
To wit: the question is not whether Paul agrees with Holder and Cruz (Cruz, you’ll recall, was very concerned with Holder’s dogged resistance to answering what should have been a very straightforward constitutional question); the question is, why has it taken so long for Holder or Brennan, et al., to answer (some) of the many questions surrounding the use of drones domestically — and even then, only in an informal letter, not by way of some legal opinion that can be examined and reviewed? As I noted earlier, for those who watched the filibuster, it was clear that many conservative Senators had concerns over the notion of what comes to constitute imminent, and when, even under such circumstances, the Executive and the military would claim jurisdiction over a threat. So to suggest that Paul should have been content with Holder’s coaxed-out answer, especially given the history this administration has for pushing the envelope of established Executive power, else he showed himself to be “unserious about the threat posed by terrorism” is itself an unserious argument.
Time and again, Paul noted that he had no problem with the use of lethal force against terrorists, even American terrorists living abroad who could be demonstrated to be working with foreign organizations against the US. What he did question was how those terrorists were dealt with — targeted in restaurants, in their homes, etc., where others who were potentially not working against the US were eating or lay sleeping — particularly insofar as those procedures may be carried over to a similar domestic program.
Having first mischaracterized Paul’s position on terrorism, Mirengoff, with the aid of a citation of Jonathan Tobin, is then free to speculate on Paul’s surreptitious motives, which he ties to the sins of the father, while allowing that Rand Paul is politically more clever than Ron Paul (or if you prefer, less forthcoming and honest): Rand Paul, the argument goes, is really not all that concerned with domestic drone policy, any threat from which is a “non-occurrence” because, well, as of yet, no one has been targeted. And of course, we need only deal with such things after the fact, when they become a full-fledged occurrence, else we are scaremongering. Instead, he is really talking about foreign drone policy, and opposing a perpetual war on terrorism.
— Which is odd coming from the Senator who forced a Senate vote on providing advanced weaponry, free of charge, to those who have shown a documented interest in destroying the United States and our allies in the Middle East, the net effect of which was to get the names of those who supported arming, say, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, on record.
Further, Mirengoff suggests that Paul is cleverly using all the unnuanced Hobbits, who will rally to his cause because, well, they don’t see Obama as just another liberal Democrat President, but rather as something more sinister, their imaginations having run wild, and their opposition to perfectly righteous policies coming out of this White House a sign of their unthinking, knee-jerk rejection of anything advanced by Obama. And “conservatives who are serious about national security and fighting terrorism,” Mirengoff counsels, “should resist the temptation.”
But what temptation is it that we should resist, specifically? The temptation to see the line of legal reasoning the federal government will use to determine if, when, where, and under what specific circumstances if it can target American citizens with a drone strike here in the US? The temptation to pin down on constitutional rationale a Justice Department that ran a gun running operation without informing the Mexican government? A Justice Department that, as J Christian Adams has demonstrated, is so heavily politicized and radicalized that it often seeks ways to pressure established US law in order to subvert it to its own political ends, often at the expense of vast swaths of the citizenry whom the Attorney General doesn’t consider “his people”?
And honestly, how did it happen that those who are in favor of “comprehensive immigration reform” — which always seems to end with amnesty but never with any significant improvement in border security — come to speak for “conservatives who are serious about national security and fighting terrorism”?
The bottom line is this: Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, Pat Toomey, Mike Lee, Marco Rubio, and John Barrasso — most of whom were fought by the GOP establishment in the Republican primaries — stood up to the Obama administration in a way that a GOP-controlled House and the Senate Republican leadership have been unwilling to do.
Paul’s campaign showed that old-style parliamentary procedure — which when done right asserts the proper checks on legislators, and between the various branches of government — can be effective, and can galvanize not only the party, but can attract bipartisan support.
That is, Paul and the TEA Party conservatives in the Senate showed what is possible in an actual adversarial two-party representative republic: namely, that the ruling class and its reliance on autopilot can be slowed down, and that — even more — we, the people, want to see more of that.
For the permanent ruling class, this is a problem. And so the campaign to begin tarring activist conservatives who answer not to the Party but to the people has now officially begun in earnest.
And it has to. Otherwise, Jeb Bush / Chris Christie don’t stand a chance in 2016 of picking up any kind of broad GOP support. Powerline and Tobin are merely early adopters.
(h/t JD)
manufactured
does he mean kinda like when meghan’s coward daddy suspended his campaign to save the economy?
Heard on Rush today that McCain and Graham both admonished Paul for being unhelpful.
Rush was letting them have it. Basically said the old guard needs to get the fuck out of the way and let the youngsters show them how things work.
looks like the hotairs are waiting to see which way the wind blows
Sen. Paul needs to get the hell off Maverick’s lawn.
Beck was on fire about this this morning. The MSM — to which it appears Hindraker, Mirengoff, et al can be added — is to the Press what the GOP, as of yesterday, just became to the collective freedom movement. In other words to original, structural, genuine America.
Having frozen out the real story, they themselves shall be frozen out of progress. Rand Paul just launched a third party.
Whether emotionally, spiritually, politically, or however you want to see it, the GOP died yesterday, and strategically or not Paul just highlighted that right-minded Americans, who know no more party bounds than the group that stood with Paul now do, will unify behind simple constitutionality. Behind presumptions of innocence, behind divided powers, and behind due process.
It is with no small pleasure that I herald the beginning of the end of the establishment right and all its tools. The GOP is finally, visibly, intellectually dead. The Tea Party did this thing too.
All RINO squishes must get primaried. Dig up some TP candidates and support them. Boot these losers out.
The LA Times has been running an internet poll question with their story since yesterday.
Point = 94%, Score political points = 6%
Exactly, geoffb. Nobody drawing breath could legitimately deny the assault on fundamental rights Paul was protesting.
Powerline used to be the first blog I read every day. I stopped reading it altogether because of nonsense like this from Mirengoff. That probably saved me the price of a new laptop during the GOP primaries.
Et tu, LA f*hic*ing Times?
Paul did something yesterday that is incredibly rare for a Republican: he caught the attention, and support, of the Left. We can laugh at Code Pink and John Cusack, but Paul converted them to our side on this topic. This should be studied and replicated by the party, not scorned.
From now on, I’m going to refer to reactions like Powerline’s and McGraham’s as “Whigging out.”
looks like the estimably good sensical erika at the hot air has taken a cautious stab at the issue but leans towards favoring Mr. Senator Paul’s position
Heard on Rush today that McCain and Graham both admonished Paul for being unhelpful.
Piece at Politico in which both stooges stink the air up.
“Don’t let him get to you, Barry. I’ll have a talk with the little fucker.”
Dale @ 11:48a wins the thread. +100 internets!
Well doy there was some political grandstanding going on. Of course some of the reasoning behind the filibuster was to provide an opportunity for Paul et al. to deliver some well-deserved criticism to the O-ministration on a number of different points.
My first response to the Beck-alleged bombshell—that Holder had left some wiggle room about the U.S. Military using lethal force on Americans on our home soil—was a mild yawn. It didn’t seem unreasonable to me that the AG would decline to state something absolutely absolute, in writing.
However, when you add the use of foreign drone strikes (a genuinely debatable issue) with the O-ministration’s general arrogance and lawlessness, plus their inability to say “of COURSE you don’t bomb the guy in the cafe,” plus the “infinite detention” arrogation of power, plus the weakening of the term “imminent,” plus the categorization of TEA partiers (though not by that name) as potential terrorists, plus What We Know About History, plus What We Know About Obama, it becomes absolutely legitimate to “grandstand” as loudly and as vociferously as possible.
Paul repeatedly made a coherent case for his objections by tying them in with the O-ministrations Known Offenses and asking quite rightly whether they were hoping to keep an especially obnoxious option open to them.
Because after the drone strike (or the assassination by sniper) is over and done with, it’s SO much easier to justify things after the fact, to ask forgiveness than permission, or to insist that “We Had Reliable Intelligence On Those People,” and if that doesn’t work, to break out “well, at least he didn’t lie us into a whole war.”
He’s essentially gotten away with Benghazi. Why wouldn’t he think he can go further?
*
Yes, that.
“The escalation of the class war against the poor and the working class is intense. More and more working people are beaten down. They are world-weary. They are into self-medication. They are turning on each other. They are scapegoating the most vulnerable rather than confronting the most powerful. It is a profoundly human response to panic and catastrophe. I thought Barack Obama could have provided some way out. But he lacks backbone.
“Can you imagine if Barack Obama had taken office and deliberately educated and taught the American people about the nature of the financial catastrophe and what greed was really taking place? If he had told us what kind of mechanisms of accountability needed to be in place, if he had focused on homeowners rather than investment banks for bailouts and engaged in massive job creation he could have nipped in the bud the right-wing populism of the tea party folk. The tea party folk are right when they say the government is corrupt. It is corrupt. Big business and banks have taken over government and corrupted it in deep ways.
“We have got to attempt to tell the truth, and that truth is painful. It is a truth that is against the thick lies of the mainstream. In telling that truth we become so maladjusted to the prevailing injustice that the Democratic Party, more and more, is not just milquetoast and spineless, as it was before, but thoroughly complicitous with some of the worst things in the American empire.”
– Cornel West
Cornel Ronald West is an American philosopher, academic, activist, author and prominent member of the Democratic Socialists of America.
OT, but this is too rich…
Paul “spend your way out of debt” Krugman Declares Personal Bankruptcy
$7,346,000 in debts versus $33,000 in assets.
FTFH
DL – That’s a satire site.
I bet $100 you won’t find a story at the Duranty Times about the soopergenius’s difficulty balancing his budget.
The Currant is a satirical paper, Darth.
It was right the way it was originally, geoffb. Think central banking, money by federal declaration and policy, bubble globe, the three cent dollar, QE infinity, Too Big to Prosecute, Hank Paulson, Teh Bernank, the entire damn stock market, daily monkey-hammering of important commodities, and a universe of misery and fail all aimed at relocating everything to the top.
Which it has. Think Jefferson, Thos.
I can assure you Paul has.
Oh, no wonder I thought it was funny.
I declare myself stung.
I used to read Powerline regularly. However, as soon as I noticed their establishment leanings, I gave up. That was probably a couple of years ago.
It was the Tiffany’s bill that made it irresistible.
I happened to catch the David Webb show for a bit last night on Sirius. (didn’t even know Mr. Webb existed until last night.) Anyway, Mr. Webb had a number of self-proclaimed democrat Obama voters calling to support Rand Paul’s filibuster.
Road to Damascus moment for more than a few democrats, if my small sample size is any indication.
Where are they? You would have to be really, epically stoned to see creatures that don’t exist. The Guardian is always ready with these clueless pieces, just to keep their drooling halfwitted readership up to speed.
SW – Sounds like Democracy NOW’s Amy Goodman has finally noticed that all of her fellow anti-war folks clammed up after Obama’s election, and have continued their silence while he continued the Bush policies they hated and implemented additional ones like drone assassinations.
That article is a feather in Rand Paul’s cap – he’s moved the anti-war Left into admitting what a failure Obama has been for them. This is a wedge issue that needs to be further exploited.
This is a wedge issue that needs to be further exploited.
Libby, this Dem party is entirely composed of Obots. I don’t see them criticising their god-king, ever, lest the Woodward treatment is applied. Still, we can point and laugh. They are shameless.
“Rand Paul’s filibuster — is it grandstanding or something worse?”
“POGs – rape tokens for the under-aged or cardboard symbols of Satan?”
“Noah’s Ark – delusion of grandeur or bestiality fetish?”
I’ve wasted no time reading Powerline. Statist GOP mouthpieces; loping curs protecting Master’s flanks. Toothless loping curs, as it were.
“The TEA Party: threat or menace?”
“A nonoccurance, so far.”
D’oh!
Dicentra,
Dont forget the giant paper mache Bush puppet heads burning in effigy.
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