Rand Paul

Joe Biden’s idea of healing America

Featured image The Biden administration pretends to perceive a threat of “domestic terrorism” when angry parents show up at school board meetings to demand answers as to why their young children have to wear masks all day and be taught that America is racist. Meanwhile, angry mobs who actually terrorize conservative politicians and harass a center-left one are subjects of benign neglect from Team Biden. Rand Paul’s wife has had enough of »

BLM mob attacks Rand Paul

Featured image The other day, I wrote a post called “It can happen here. In fact, it’s already happening.” By “it,” I meant mob assault against people for having political views the mob doesn’t like or even for just refusing to affirm the mob’s political views. This had just occurred at a series of Washington, D.C. restaurants. It happened here in Washington again last night. Sen. Rand Paul was confronted by an »

Has Trump tapped Rand Paul for a mission to the mullahs? Trump says no

Featured image Yesterday, I saw reports that President Trump had agreed to have Rand Paul talk with Iranian foreign minister Javad Zarif, who is in New York City this week for a U.N. conference. The reports struck me as questionable. Is Trump impatient or even disillusioned with his own Iran policy? He might be. Is he unhappy with the advisers who urged him to adopt the policy? If he’s unhappy with the »

Rand Paul will vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh [UPDATE: MORE GOOD NEWS]

Featured image Sen. Rand Paul announced today that he will support Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court. Paul had said he was on the fence. Most of us expected that Paul would back Kavanaugh in the end, but it’s good that he’s now on record and good that he didn’t drag out whatever suspense he might have created. Sen. Paul said this: After meeting Judge Kavanaugh and reviewing his record, I »

Rand Paul’s neighbors dismiss “property dispute” reports

Featured image In the aftermath of the assault by Rene Boucher ( “the leftist next door”) on Sen. Rand Paul, Boucher’s lawyer claimed that politics played no part in the attack. I put no stock in public statements by attorneys defending their clients. However, there were also reports about landscaping dispute, and suggestions that Sen. Paul is not a good neighbor. Even if these reports were true, it wouldn’t mean that Boucher’s »

The leftist next door

Featured image As more information becomes available, we learn that Rene Boucher, the man who assaulted and seriously injured Rand Paul, is (as John suggested) a rabidly anti-Trump leftist. According to this report from PJ Media, Boucher’s activity on social media consists to a considerable degree of reposting anti-Trump memes and stories and sharing posts from Bernie Sanders. However, Boucher wasn’t solely a copycat. He did offer this original thought: May Robert »

The Worst Republican Senator

Featured image There really ought to be a statute of limitations on how long John McCain can play the tortured war hero card. His war hero status was exhausted with me a decade ago over a single instance. Brad Smith, who as chairman of the Federal Election Commission and law professor dared to criticize the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law on constitutional grounds (later vindicated in several Supreme Court cases culminating in the »

Live from Council Bluffs, it’s Rand Paul

Featured image Nebraska attorney David Begley continues his series of reports on appearances of the presidential candidates in Iowa for us. Yesterday Dave attended the appearance of Senator Rand Paul in Council Bluffs, Iowa. The Omaha World-Herald has posted its report here. Dave’s report is below. Rand Paul made his first Iowa post-debate appearance yesterday in Council Bluffs. The room was full with about 90 people. Many seemed to be followers of »

How Rand Paul Got Trumped [with comment by Paul]

Featured image Back in the old days when Jerry Taylor was at the Cato Institute, he used to bust my chops regularly and mercilessly for the slightest tergiversation from free market orthodoxy. But as he’s a really smart guy, and because his boisterously astringent style is so much fun, I never minded being on the receiving end. Nowadays Jerry has become some kind of low grade climatista, and is plumping for a »

Empire populism

Featured image The Republican party of Kentucky has approved a rule change that will allow Rand Paul to run for president while seeking reelection to the Senate. That’s the good news for Sen. Paul. The bad news is that, according to the RCP poll average, Paul’s share of the GOP vote stands at 4.3 percent. This puts him a three-way tie for 8th place with Mike Huckabee and John Kasich. That’s quite »

Is Rick Perry on his way out? Is Rand Paul?

Featured image The Washington Post reports that Rick Perry has stopped paying his presidential staff because his fundraising has “dried up.” The campaign reported raising $1.14 million in the second quarter of this year. As of July 15, Perry had almost $900,000 on hand. However, he probably blew through some of this money in advertising aimed (unsuccessfully, it turned out) at pushing him into the top 10 in time for the early »

Can Rand Paul use the Cleveland debate to make himself relevant?

Featured image Rand Paul has become a diminished force in the presidential race, to the point that we have wondered “where did Rand Paul go?” Thursday’s debate will give Paul an opportunity to roar back into the consciousness of Republican voters. But to do so, Dave Weigel of the Washington Post suggests, he will have to take a page out of his father’s playbook and swing for the fences as an ardent »

Where Did Rand Paul Go? (2)

Featured image Last week we pondered the disappearance of Rand Paul. Once again, Power Line was on top of the curve. Today, Politico has a long feature on Paul’s “downward spiral.” Interviews with more than a dozen sources close to the Kentucky senator, all of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity, painted a picture of an underfunded and understaffed campaign beaten down by low morale. They described an operation that pitted »

Where Did Rand Paul Go?

Featured image Rand Paul seems to have been shuffled off into the presidential candidate equivalent of the witness protection program. For a while several months back it appeared he’d be a serious contender, with strong appeal potentially beyond his father’s hard-core libertarian base. Surprisingly, though, he hasn’t raised a lot of money, despite presumably having his dad’s direct mail list. The mainstream media have taken notice of this. “Where Is Rand Paul?”, »

Rand Paul and Ted Cruz move to the left of Lindsey Graham on terrorist rights

Featured image Earlier this week, the Senate passed an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that limits the entire U.S. government to only the interrogation and detention techniques outlined in the Army Field Manual. The vote was 78-21. The Army Field Manual does not permit physical contact with detainees, not even a slap. The harshest method it permits the “Fear-Up (Harsh).” In this approach, “the interrogator behaves in an overpowering »

The Insincerity of Rand Paul

Featured image I had hopes at the outset that Rand Paul would be more sensible than his father, and for a while it looked like this might be the case. He has been about the only prominent Republican trying to broaden the base of the Republican Party by speaking on college campuses and to minority groups, and he made measured attempts to set out a “non-interventionist” foreign policy vision that was not »

The real Rand Paul stands up

Featured image As John notes below, Rand Paul has used his Senatorial prerogative to block the Patriot Act. As a result, its provisions will expire at midnight. A new Act will be passed, but probably not for at least 72 hours. Let’s hope that terrorists worldwide respect Sen. Paul’s prerogative and wait 72 hours before using using U.S. phone lines to plot attacks on U.S. interests. Rand Paul is concerned, as he »