With all the moaning that some people here have done about the new-style “fillibuster,” I’m astounded that nobody has bothered to mention Sen. Rand Paul and his old-school fillibuster. It’s over now, but it lasted several hours.
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/06/rand-paul-filibusters-brennan-nomination/
Of course, he’s a conservative, so I suppose most people here can’t bring themselves to say anything good about Sen. Paul, even when he does something that they claim to want.
Who specifically are you addressing? There are a lot of people on the board who want the filibuster to be limited to having to actually get up and hold the floor by talking, but wanting filibuster’s limited to actually holding the floor isn’t the same thing as particularly wanting filibusters that hold the floor. I don’t think anybody has actually claimed to be super-interested in hearing Senators drone on for 12 hours.
Anyhoo, do you have any thoughts on Paul’s filibuster? Your OP is completely made-up of meta-analysis on what you feel the boards reaction to Paul should be. It seems kinda silly to criticize people for not talking about a topic regarding which you yourself don’t have much to say about.
I’ll say it: Paul is wrong to filibuster this. Brennan is a pretty good candidate. I agree with Paul that we should have more documentation from the White House about drone strikes, but I don’t think this is the way to do it. But at least Paul has the courage of his convictions to stand up and actually give a damn filibuster, not hide behind the procedural crap that the Senate does nowadays.
What makes Brennan a good candidate? His reluctance to answer direct questions?
I support the notion that filibustering a bill should be more than a paperwork dick move, i.e. actually bringing the congress’s business to a halt by speaking endlessly. That would cut McConnell’s ability to be Beoner’s procedural bitch and make CSPAN more interesting.
Yet, despite my personal view that Rand Paul is the craziest SOB in his own family, let alone on Capitol Hill, in this case , I agree with him. The executive branch should not have unchecked powers of capital punishment on whomever it decrees a terrorist. I think the threshold should be much higher (full trial by peer), but if nothing else, he should be forced to prove the assertion to a person who you can’t fire for not being your yes-man.
Is it a good idea to filibuster an appointment over this? Probably not, but the administration I’ve voted for twice has claimed the legal ability to kill me without charge in my own home. Holder’s letter saying the administration has no plans for domestic terror drone targeting should be taken as seriously as the promise not to go after medical marijuana facilities.
Well, I just found out about it a few minutes ago. I disagree with the goal of his effort (Limitation on drone use). As far as I’m concerned it was so much hot air. I believe the stated US policy should be that we will use drones anywhere and on anyone that we deem suitable. He didn’t put much of a dent in that belief.
NOW, had he gone against all drone use, then I would have a different opinion. Either drones are right or wrong. Why should we be free to kill foreign people in their homes and not free to do the same thing to US citizens on US soil?
As far as I can tell, his point was that a US citizen who throw in with terrorists should somehow have some special protection. IF you are plotting against or taking action against the US government, we should be free to splatter your body across the sidewalk, no matter where you were born, no matter where you were raised and no matter where you are standing.
Also, it sounds like he only personally spoke for about three or four hours, then others took over. So his “I will speak until I can no longer speak” sounds like he turned out to be a total light weight.
The average teacher teaches 6-7 hours a day. Paid speakers can go on for a cumulative 9-10 hours in a single day if their seminars have night sessions… so talking for 3 hours.. meh… not quite so impressive.
Eh, I don’t have any problem with Paul’s move here. He wants to try and convince people regarding his way of thinking, and making a showy gesture and long 12 hr speech like this is a perfectly cromulent way to do that. In anycase, its not like the Senate had some super-important business they had to do at 11:00pm last night that this was getting in the way of.
But its not some high minded stand, the reason he’s doing this instead of a real filibuster is because he doesn’t have anywhere near the votes to block Brennan. Even several of the Senators that were on the floor with him said they planned to vote for confirmation (and in several cases, had already voted him out of committee). If Paul had 40 Senators that agreed with him, I’m sure he’d actually filibuster Brennan’s nomination.
I don’t mind that Paul did this, nor do I mind him being conservative. I happen to think he’s a whackadoodle do or die, representing an immoral and abhorrent philosophy of governing. But if he wants to get up and talk for hours on end, I say go ahead and knock yourself out. I just think it’s a stunt to put himself in the national spotlight for what will surely be, like his father, the first of many failed runs for the presidency.
I don’t have the time or motive to Google-click and scrutinize Rand Paul’s move, whatever it was.
Is it the case that he could he could have done a simple “modern” filibuster – wasting 30 seconds of time on the Senate floor – but instead did an old-fashioned filibuster for show? If so, I’d say it was the worst of both worlds. Old-fashioned long-speech filibusters were meaningful because they were the only way to filibuster. If Paul could have done a simple “modern” filibuster, but chose instead to waste Senate’s time, what’s there to like?
People aren’t supportive of talking filibusters or whatever they’re called; they’re supportive of there being a chance a filibuster can fail from exhaustion. This one did. As it should have. Because it was stupid.
This is why Rand Paul and the news coverage of his filibuster is deplorable. Now a new, and stupid, idea has entered the thinking of Americans - “the drone strike hypothesis”. It is ludicrous to imagine drone strikes being carried out on Americans on American soil. First, it’s unconstitutional. Second, can you stop and think of much better ways to assassinate Americans on American soil? How about a knife? How about a stick? How about an AR15? How about a pistol? How about a noose? How about running them over with a car? How about pushing them off a subway platform? How about a sniper rifle? How about burning them alive? How about a hammer? How about covering them in honey and throwing them in a bear tank? How about burying them to their necks in sand and waiting for the vultures to do their work? How about stuffing them full of McDonald’s?
Why don’t you spend a few minutes thinking on why drones are used to kill terrorists, some of them Americans, in countries like Yemen or Pakistan? It’s so overwhelmingly unfortunate that yet another stupid idea has uncritically made its way into the American brain. I’m sure we’ll have as much success dislodging it as we have with Birthers, Truthers, and Antivaxers.
Beware the black drones!
No.
What makes him a good candidate is his reluctance to admit that effect of using drones is similar using torture. He can be, shal we say very persuasive. However, today mantra is “torture bad - drones good” only because of who’s in WH. Plus, it’s Sen. Paul so then drones not just good, drones MUST be good. In the words of Mr. Hicks - go to sleep America, you’re in good hands.
That’s what they said about torture. Then, they found a lawyer who will “study” it and come up with an opinion. And now, it isn’t.
On a related note, the issue about drones is not “a drone as a killing tool” - it’s the question of due process (i.e. killing people without due process) and collateral damage (i.e. confirmed killings of innocent people).
Rand’s filibuster was a grandstand move motivated by the quaint naivete of a true believer. Nevertheless, I applaud his efforts to draw attention to the issue of drone strikes in general, and in particular the fact that the administration couldn’t categorically rule out using flying death robots within the United States at their personal discretion. It wouldn’t have been that hard to respond to Senator Paul’s question with “No, the president doesn’t have the authority to use military drones in the US, for the same reason he doesn’t have the authority to roll tanks into NYC.” But executives are loathe to mention any limit on their power when there’s no political advantage in doing so, even when it’s tantamount to saying the president can establish a police state under certain “very rare and exceptional” circumstances. I personally am not worried about Obama; I’m worried about some nutjob president in the future.
In some ways the drone discussion reminds me of the torture debates during the Bush administration. There was a time in the US when that was ruled out by consensus–no one disagreed that, e.g., waterboarding was torture. But, as administration lawyers wrote internal memos justifying the practice, and the talking heads seriously defended the practice, sudenly there was a debate about the “appropriate use” of torture. And what was strange about that debate is that it never really reached a definitive conclusion, such that today most people would acknowedge that the US probably does torture, and even that it’s probably allowable under murky conditions that I-just-don’t-want-to-think-about-because-it’s-too-icky–ooh, is that Kim Kardashian on my teevee?
This just sounds like a justification for adopting a belief. Is the due process of Americans on American soil under serious, consistent threat?
Which talking heads are defending the practice of assassinating Americans on American soil? I don’t think your analogy is holding up.
The point is they never said they couln’t, just that they wouldn’t. People want to ban assualt weapons even though gun owners say the would never use them to commit a crime. Most gun owners would never use them to commit a crime and most presidents would never use drones except in a dire emergency. Now the question is what is a dire emergency? Attempting to bomb a building? Buying the materiels to make the bomb? Planning the bombing? Or thinking real hard about maybe someday trying to maybe bomb some type of building, cause you know now that were gonna be terrorist types in the U.S. that’s what we should do. I just think that if its agood idea to allow the pres. to have this type of authority it really needs to be in black and white what his authority is.
FBI Director Robert Mueller, in testimony before Congress last March:
And here’s Senator Lindsey Graham on the Senate floor defending the National Defense Authorization Act in 2012 against amendments targeted to exempt American citizens from its provisions: “The statement of authority to detain, does apply to American citizens and it designates the world as the battlefield, including the homeland.”
Now, your point may be that this issue isn’t discussed much in the news media, which is why there are so few media-based “talking heads” defending the practice. On that we agree; hopefully Senator Paul’s filibuster will change that, but I suspect it will be quickly reduced to a cultural oddity, much like Obama’s “Jedi mind-meld” comment was over-dissected by the media such that the president’s larger point was lost in the noise.
Mueller only deferred to the Department of Justice, which is probably what he is supposed to do.
What does his comment on detention have to do with anything?
Perhaps it’s you and your preferred sources of information that is doing the dissecting? All I’ve heard are bureaucrats not saying something definitively. It’s not exactly wonderful they don’t grandstand for the Constitution whenever they get the chance but this sounds a lot more like making an issue from nothing.
This is noise.
Here’s my rule of thumb on blogs: if some guy in cyberspace is going to accuse somebody of saying something outrageous, and he can’t actually include the quote (and an idea of the context) that is the source of the controversy, then that is a manufactured controversy.
The text of the filibuster is available in the online Congressional Record.
There doesn’t seem to be any way to link directly to it, but you can access it:
I’m not a fan of Rand Paul in general, but
Props for filibustering old-school style. I applaud him for standing for his convictions and doing the filibuster the right way.
I have a lot of sympathy for his concern about domestic drone strikes. I agree with a lot of his concerns.
I’m not sure that this approval vote was the best venue for this filibuster, but at least it’s brought some attention to the issue.