Rand Paul, Pres Obama ‘Probably the World’s Biggest Hypocrite’
Today, on Sean Hannity’s radio show, Senator Rand Paul summed up his views of President Obama’s track record on civil liberties:
…[Y]ou want to stand up and applaud him as a defender of the Bill of Rights until you find out he’s probably the world’s biggest hypocrite. You know what he tells us? He says, “O, it’s just a modest loss of your privacy.” A billion phone calls a day are being looked at…Really, his greatest crime is his hypocrisy–for running against President Bush and then doing it even more so, but now presiding over an administration that appears to use information, from the IRS at least, for political purposes.
Surprisingly, the bigger shocker are Sean Hannity’s comments–following Senator Paul’s–on the NSA leaker, Edward Snowden,
I’m not saying he’s irrelevant, but by him exposing this, to me, is not a bad thing…You’re not going to catch anybody this way!
So what do you think? You can reference the president’s past statements on civil liberties down below.
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1. December 15, 2005, Senate floor statement on the PATRIOT Act:
This is just plain wrong. Giving law enforcement the tools they need to investigate suspicious activity is one thing – and it’s the right thing – but doing it without any real oversight seriously jeopardizes the rights of all Americans and the ideals America stands for.
2. February 16, 2006, Senate floor statement on the PATRIOT Act Reauthorization:
Soon after the PATRIOT Act passed, a few years before I ever arrived in the Senate, I began hearing concerns from people of every background and political leaning that this law didn’t just provide law enforcement the powers it needed to keep us safe, but powers it didn’t need to invade our privacy without cause or suspicion.
3. May 25, 2006, Senate floor statement on the nomination of General Michael Hayden to the directorship of the CIA:
Over the last six months, Americans have learned that the National Security Agency has been spying on Americans without judicial approval. . . .
We don’t expect the president to give the American people every detail about a classified surveillance program. But we do expect him to place such a program within the rule of law, and to allow members of the other two coequal branches of government — Congress and the Judiciary — to have the ability to monitor and oversee such a program. Our Constitution and our right to privacy as Americans require as much. . . .
Every democracy is tested when it is faced with a serious threat. As a nation, we have to find the right balance between privacy and security, between executive authority to face threats and uncontrolled power. What protects us, and what distinguishes us, are the procedures we put in place to protect that balance, namely judicial warrants and congressional review. These aren’t arbitrary ideas. These are the concrete safeguards that make sure that surveillance hasn’t gone too far. That someone is watching the watchers. . . .
We need to find a way forward to make sure that we can stop terrorists while protecting the privacy, and liberty, of innocent Americans. We have to find a way to give the president the power he needs to protect us, while making sure he doesn’t abuse that power.”
4. September 27, 2006, Senate floor statement on the Habeas Corpus Amendment:
That is the true genius of America — a faith in simple dreams, an insistence on small miracles; that we can tuck in our children at night and know that they are fed and clothed and safe from harm; that we can say what we think, write what we think, without hearing a sudden knock on the door.
5. October 30, 2007, Democratic presidential debate on MSNBC:
What we cannot continue to do is operate as if we are the weakest nation in the world instead of the strongest one, because that’s not who we are. And that’s not what America has been about historically, and it is starting to warp our domestic policies, as well. We haven’t even talked about civil liberties and the impact of that politics of fear, what that has done to us in terms of undermining basic civil liberties in this country, what it has done in terms of our reputation around the world.
6. December 24, 2007, “Right vs. Security: Candidates take stance” Des Moines Register:
When I am president, there will be no more illegal wiretapping of American citizens. No more national security letters to spy on citizens who are not suspected of a crime. No more tracking citizens who do nothing more than protest a misguided war.
Read 4 more from National Review here.