Category Archives: Constitution

UPDATE V: Rand Paul Slaying The Drone (Political Triangulation)

Constitution, Founding Fathers, Homeland Security, libertarianism, Politics, Republicans, Ron Paul

Today, Rand Paul, the junior Senator from Kentucky, donned his superhero power cape and came to the Senate floor to do battle against the Killer Drone and his bipartisan posse (Republicans generally favor the drone program).

What’s not to like about Rand slaying The Drone, albeit quixotically?

WaPo:

Sen. Rand Paul’s (R-Ky.) talking filibuster against John Brennan’s nomination as CIA director is gaining supporters, and it’s now a bipartisan effort.
Paul began speaking just before noon Wednesday on the Senate floor in opposition to Brennan’s nomination, saying that he planned to speak “for the next few hours” in a rare talking filibuster.
Paul, who strongly opposes the Brennan nomination and the Obama administration’s use of unmanned aerial drones, became the first senator to make use of the procedural tactic in more than two years and the first to do so since the Senate approved a bipartisan rules reform package in January.

On a more serious note: “Rand Paul: Action Hero, Or Political Performance Artist?”, last week’s column, would have been better timed for this week.

And the questions the column posed still obtain: “Is this political Brownian motion—the case of activity substituting for achievement—or real Randian energy in furtherance of liberty? … Is Rand Paul an action hero, or … is he just a political performance artist?”

And should libertarians be so hard on the guy?

UPDATE I: As I wrote last week, “Rand Paul is front-and-center in mainstream media, showing what some call ‘leadership.'” Here are the many headlines Rand has grabbed just on the WaPo:

Sen. Rand Paul began the filibuster at 11:47 a.m. (AP)
Paul makes rare filibuster stand
Republican senator acknowledges his remarks won’t stop John Brennan’s confirmation vote to lead the CIA.

LIVE: Filibuster on the Senate floor
In the Loop: Filibusters ain’t what they used to be
The Fix: Rand Paul’s unpredictable streak

UPDATE II: DRUDGE: “RAND STANDS: HOUR 10.” The Drudge headline links to this Washington Times article.

UPDATE III (3/7): WINNING. Action hero it is. Rand Paul’s “Jimmy Stewart-esque filibuster over the Obama administration’s drone policy,” achieved something Chris Matthews “forgets” to mention:

The usually unresponsive potentate responded to Rand:

The U.S. government cannot target an American citizen who is not engaged in combat on American soil, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said Thursday during his daily press briefing. … Carney said that Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) had on Thursday asked the administration if the president has the authority to use a mechanized drone against an American on U.S. soil who is not engaged in hostile activities. “The answer to that question is no,” Carney said. Appearing on CNN on Thursday afternoon, Paul declared that Holder’s response was satisfactory and that he would allow a vote on Brennan’s nomination.
“I’m quite happy with the answer and I’m disappointed it took a month and a half and a root canal to get it,” Paul said.

Not so fast. Writes Reason’s Brian Doherty: “But who is a noncombatant? What constitutes engaging in hostile activities to the White House? Does this still leave the ‘we declare you a combatant” excuse? More clarity needed.'”

Via Politico, the complete text of a letter Attorney General Holder sent to Rand Paul today. In its entirety: “It has come to my attention that you have now asked an additional question: ‘Does the President have the authority to use a weaponized drone to kill an American not engaged in combat on American soil?’ The answer to that question is no.”
Still: what defines “engaged in combat” to you guys? Doesn’t seem to actively apply to most victims of overseas drones. Does it mean, as Lindsey Graham suggested, just being a member of Al-Queda, a topic on which the White House will undoubtedly declare itself sole judge (and then jury, and executioner)? Also, the mechanism of the kill–mechanized drone–isn’t the sole issue at point here. It’s summary executive power to decide who to kill without charge or trial in a Forever War.

POLITICAL TRIANGULATION. MSNBC’s Chris Matthews can rise on his hind legs all he likes, in trying to bad-mouth Rand Paul’s valiant effort. Politically, Rand has triangulated—gotten some on the Left to listen, neutralized flaccid neoconservatives such as McMussolini and Sen. Lindsey Graham, and galvanized idiotic GOPers—pure partisans, who care not about the principle (they love droning dem ‘terrorists’), but see this as a blow against Obama.

UPDATE IV: Gloats Glenn Beck (who harbors no love for the GOP): “Did Rand Paul just kill the old GOP?”

Rand Paul has a long way to go to become my action hero. Let’s see him use the tactics he has applied against drones on the homegrown terrorists of the TSA.

UPDATE V (3/8): Via LRC.COM, William Grigg unpacks “What Holder Really Said”:

…Like all statements from people who presume to rule others, this brief message from Holder – – who is Nickolai Krylenko to Obama’s Josef Stalin – should be read in terms of the supposed authority claimed thereby. This means removing useless qualifiers in the interest of clarity.
What Holder is saying, in substantive terms, is that the President does have the supposed authority to use a drone to kill an American who is engaged in “combat,” whether here or abroad. “Combat” can consist of expressing support for Muslims mounting armed resistance against U.S. military aggression, which was the supposed crime committed by Anwar al-Awlaki, or sharing the surname and DNA of a known enemy of the state, which was the offense committed by Awlaki’s 16-year-old son, Abdel. Under the rules of engagement used by the Obama Regime in Pakistan, Yemen, and Afghanistan, any “military-age” male found within a targeted “kill zone” is likewise designated a “combatant,” albeit usually after the fact. This is a murderous application of the “Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy,” and it will be used when — not if — Obama or a successor starts conducting domestic drone-killing operations.
Holder selected a carefully qualified question in order to justify a narrowly tailored answer that reserves an expansive claim of executive power to authorize summary executions by the president. That’s how totalitarians operate.

MORE.

[SNIP]

Will Grigg is right, but nothing Grigg says detracts from Rand’s effort. Grigg’s analysis, invaluable as it usually is, is not an argument against … putting up a fight.

I myself believe that the only fight that’ll bear fruit is the fight Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) alluded to:

“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it’s natural manure.”

President Pain

Barack Obama, Constitution, Ethics, Government, IMMIGRATION

It is “almost an impeachable offense for Obama to make specific spending cuts to hurt us,” contended Judge Andrew Napolitano on Fox And Friends.

“The key word is PAIN. If the president is deciding how to spend money in order to hurt us,” said Judge Napolitano, “rather than in order to provide us with the services for which we have paid, and for which we have hired him—he is doing the opposite of what he has taken an oath to do.”

He has taken an oath faithfully to uphold the laws. In other words, to make the government work; don’t make it painful. Find a way to make it work on 2 percent less. He has, absolute, leeway as the chief executive. Leeway is integral to his office. As the head of the Executive Branch, the president can prioritize money and cuts. … Instead, he wants to cut in away that’ll make us stand inline five hours at the airport, and teach the Republicans a lesson. That’s the way the Constitution [should] work.

(VIA Myron Pauli.) The president’s first priority in causing you pain, just so you know who’s boss—he and family, after all, have a security detail for life—is to spring criminal aliens from jail.

Not only is this president an ass with ears, but he is also pain in the ass.

David Mamet Packs Heat, Sheds Light

Affirmative Action, Conservatism, Constitution, Government, GUNS, Hollywood, Individual Rights, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, Race, Republicans, The State

In “Gun Laws and the Fools of Chelm,*” the talented Hollywood playwright, author, director, and producer David Mamet motivates for his individual right to defend life, liberty and property.

As a conventional conservative or Republican, Mamet’s positions are often pat, lacking philosophical depth. For example: He fingers The Bureaucracy as ineffectual because lacking in compassion and common sense. However, like most members of the right-leaning establishment, Mamet is incapable of explaining the underlying dynamic or structure that accounts for the inversion of economic incentives in the bureaucracy, irrespective of the good intentions and good character of the bureaucrats.

Mamet also mouths the conventional conservative talking points about affirmative action: that it is based in the mistaken premise that “black people have fewer abilities than white people,” a notion Mamert calls “monstrous.”

The “I love blacks, so I want to make them compete on an equal footing” mantra is as prevalent a platitude among conservatives as it is stupid. Affirmative action is based on the immutable fact of blacks’ lower aggregate scores in academia and in other fields. The “monstrous” part of it is that quotas treat all individual blacks as part of an underachieving, oppressed cohort. As does it lump all whites—the poor, the underprivileged and the victimized too—in a group that needs to suffer for the sake of black upliftment.

Also lackluster or absent is Mamet’s defense of a natural right that predates the constitutional right to bear arms. But Mamet should be appreciated for writing very well, and for being a lone voice for reason and rights in Hollywood, writing that,

…there are more than 2 million instances a year of the armed citizen deterring or stopping armed criminals; a number four times that of all crimes involving firearms.
The Left loves a phantom statistic that a firearm in the hands of a citizen is X times more likely to cause accidental damage than to be used in the prevention of crime, but what is there about criminals that ensures that their gun use is accident-free? If, indeed, a firearm were more dangerous to its possessors than to potential aggressors, would it not make sense for the government to arm all criminals, and let them accidentally shoot themselves? Is this absurd? Yes, and yet the government, of course, is arming criminals.
Violence by firearms is most prevalent in big cities with the strictest gun laws. In Chicago and Washington, D.C., for example, it is only the criminals who have guns, the law-abiding populace having been disarmed, and so crime runs riot.
Cities of similar size in Texas, Florida, Arizona, and elsewhere, which leave the citizen the right to keep and bear arms, guaranteed in the Constitution, typically are much safer. More legal guns equal less crime. What criminal would be foolish enough to rob a gun store? But the government alleges that the citizen does not need this or that gun, number of guns, or amount of ammunition.

[SNIP]

* Chelm: From Mamet’s reference to Chelm, I concluded that he is probably Jewish (and well-educated, of course, which he is).

Posse Comitatus And Police State USA

Constitution, Homeland Security, Law, Liberty, Military, Propaganda, Terrorism, The State

Americans live under a militarized police force. SWAT teams are forever poised to descend on their homes at the drop of a hat. Is it possible that the military will soon be stepping in to do some policing of its own?

The Posse Comitatus Act was supposed to restrict America’s military from acting as a domestic police force, but then none of the limits on power put in place by the Constitution and other legislation have ever stuck, now have they?

Via Drudge comes this ABC report of an especially energetic military drill in a HOUSTON neighborhood. If you hear helicopters or hear gunfire near your homes, don’t worry, assures the reporter.

Another comatose journo, writing for CBS (via Karen De Coster ), is blasé about yet more militarized operations, this time in Miami. The excuse given:

“The training is designed to ensure that military personnel are able to operate in urban areas and to focus on preparations for overseas deployment. It also serves as a mandatory training certification requirement.”

Dig a little and you’ll find a Republican or two behind earlier efforts to undermine Posse Comitatus.

On Sept. 26, President Bush urged Congress to consider revising federal laws so that the U.S. military could seize control immediately in the aftermath of a natural disaster, noting that “it may require change of law. The law the president seems to be referring to is the Posse Comitatus Act, the longstanding federal statute that restricts the government’s ability to use the U.S. military as a police force. Sen. John Warner, R.-Va., chairman of the Armed Services Committee, also has signaled his desire to change the law.”

As CATO’s Gene Healy has written , “The Posse Comitatus Act is no barrier to federal troops providing logistical support during natural disasters. Nor does it prohibit the president from using the Army to restore order in extraordinary circumstances — even over the objection of a state governor.”

What it does is set a high bar for the use of federal troops in a policing role. That reflects America’s traditional distrust of using standing armies to enforce order at home, a distrust that’s well-justified.