Ted Cruz has already made his mark in Washington. Cruz has a number of things going for him, one of which is that he is a very smart guy. Today Eric Holder testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Cruz questioned him on three topics. The first and most extensive was Holder’s view of the constitutionality of a hypothetical drone attack on an American citizen, on American soil, who is not doing anything that poses an imminent threat. Here, Cruz follows up on a question that Rand Paul posed to Holder in a letter. The exchange is fascinating, mainly because Holder doesn’t seem to understand that he isn’t answering Cruz’s question: Cruz keeps asking Holder whether such a killing would be constitutional, but Holder repeatedly responds by talking about whether such an assassination would be “appropriate.” It offers, perhaps, a glimpse into the mind of a liberal–whether something is constitutional or not depends on whether I think it is appropriate.
The other topics, treated more briefly, are also interesting: Holder’s decisions to selectively decline to enforce various federal laws, one aspect of the Obama administration’s chronic lawlessness, and Fast and Furious. On Fast and Furious, Cruz tries to get Holder to admit that there is no basis for the assertion of executive privilege, which the Obama administration has relied upon to withhold many documents:
UPDATE: I should note that Cruz’s examination of Holder obviously ties in with Rand Paul’s dramatic filibuster of Obama’s nomination of John Brennan to head the CIA. We will have more to say about that in due course.
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