Rand Paul's Stand

quote from page 17 of the June 15th 2015 Time magazine:

By Outmaneuvering the Senate, he took on his own party. Payback is coming.

By Michael Scherer

In a chamber of dark tailored suits, the rebel wore khakis, a cherry red tie to match his campaign color and an occasional smirk. He seized the U.S. Senate with magic words of parliamentary procedure and forced change upon the world's most powerful intelligence agency. "I challenge the ruling of the chair" Kentucky Senator Rand Paul said. "I request a live quorum call." Then simply: "I object."

With that, the clock ran out on key parts of the USA Patriot Act, the legal anchor of the nation's September 11 response. The once secret National Security Agency telephone record vacuum made famous by Edward Snowden went silent, and a simmering debate over the identity of the GOP burst again into view. "This is what we fought the revolution over." Paul Thundered, with a warning to his party: "80% of those under 40 say we have gone too far."

It looked more like a Hollywood remake than the real thing: the Senator standing alone, speaking of tyranny and duplicity.  But, that is the drama baked into the 2916 field.

Linsey Graham: "It would be devastating, I think, for our party to nominate Ran Paul as our nominee on National Security."

Dick Cheney: "He knows I think of him as an isolationist, and it offends him deeply."

John McCain: "He obviously has a higher priority for his fundraising and political ambitions than for the security of a nation."

 End  partial quotes from page 17 of the June 15th 2015 Time magazine

As an American independent I'm not sure I know how to feel or respond about all this. In principle, Rand Paul is right in that we should not bug the phones of everyone in the U.S. all the time or all the people on earth like the NSA was doing up until now. However, the problem is that countries like Russian and China do this and a whole lot more to harm the U.S. and anyone on earth they don't like every day 24 hours a day ongoing. So, because of what Cold War adversaries are doing it is difficult to strike the right balance between privacy and survival as a nation long term.