Where left and right meet. Paul on drones.
By Rosie Gray
Kentucky Senator Rand Paul's hours-long, multi-senator
filibuster of John Brennan's CIA director nomination has accomplished a
rare feat: questions about targeted killing and the drone program have
vaulted from the fringes to the forefront of Washington conversation,
and it's lasted nearly an entire day.
Civil libertarians have, finally, arrived.
"You
would hope that the question of whether the president can on his own
authority kill citizens in the U.S. would have come to the forefront as
soon as it was floated," said David Boaz, executive vice president of
the libertarian Cato Institute. "But it seems like it took this
particular circumstance to get people talking about it."
Paul
began his filibuster at 11:47 a.m. with the promise that "I will speak
until I can no longer speak." Over the course of the afternoon, seven
other Republican senators and one Democrat, Oregon's Ron Wyden, have
joined in the filibuster that has revolved around constitutional debate
over whether or not the administration can use its authority to turn
drones on U.S. citizens within U.S. territory.
Paul has name-checked a number of writers in the progressive libertarian space including Guardian blogger Glenn Greenwald, The Atlantic's Conor Friedersdorf, Firedoglake's Kevin Gozstola, and Esquire's
Charles P. Pierce. He has promised to continue until the administration
guarantees that it will not kill U.S. citizens within the United
States. And his filibuster is undoubtedly the political story of the
day, in mainstream news and otherwise.
Greenwald tweeted this afternoon: "Claimed assassination powers unite people" after Paul cited his column.
"Pretty
sad — and pretty revealing — that it was left to Rand Paul to raise in
the Senate the killing of 16-year-old Abdulrahman Awlaki," Greenwald tweeted later.
"What
we're seeing with the Brennan nomination is what has been so urgently
needed, but destructively missing, for so long: Congress playing the
role it was intended to play by impeding Executive Branch extremism and
prioritizing, for once, its institutional responsibilities over trivial
partisan loyalties," Greenwald told BuzzFeed in an email later.
"Everyone, regardless of party, has an equal interest in ensuring that
the ability of the president to abuse power in secret is constrained.
That this current battle is being led by members of both parties
underscores that fact, and has the real potential to trigger a truly
trans-partisan campaign against the presidential assault on core
liberties being waged on a pretense of national security."
"Not
sure if it's a 'we've arrived' moment but I'm glad to see that someone
is sticking up for civil liberties (and ultimately international law),"
said another drone program critic, Michael Shank, a professor at George
Mason University's School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, in an
email.
"Amazing that it's a Republican," Shank said. "Appreciated
Wyden's nod to the senator from Kentucky, that he 'made a number of
important points.' Now for more Dems to stand up."
Ron Wyden, who
was the only Democrat to join the filibuster, said after he had left
the floor that "we're pushing our efforts as visibly as we can."
Marco
Rubio, who also briefly joined in, said afterwards that he thought that
the issue had been simmering in the Senate for a while.
"I think
there have been significant civil liberties questions going on in the
two years that I've been here," Rubio said. "I think, for me, the issue
here today was more about the right of individual senators, no matter
how we may feel about what they stand for, to have answered relevant
questions, particularly questions of constitutional importance."
Though
the filibuster has captured the attention of the political class on
Twitter, Boaz argued that its true effectiveness would come if it makes
headlines and leads news broadcasts today and tomorrow.
"I guess a
lot of it depends on – do the newspapers and the networks treat this as
news today?" Boaz said. "I hope this s going to be significant. I also
think this is significant in that Rand Paul is clearly positioning
himself to run for president."
Boaz called for more Democrats to
join in ("Why isn't Pat Leahy down there? Why aren't some of the other
civil libertarian Democrats there?") but praised Paul for "pushing
conservatives to get excited about civil liberties."
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