Tweedledee and Tweedledum – Rand Paul and Alice and Wonderland

March 10, 2013 — bunkerville

 Time for the Sunday respite. Last week I posted a clip of Rand Paul as he took us through the looking glass with his “Alice and Wonderland” analogy. When I caught this music when making my rounds it seemed to fit perfectly. Am I the only one thinking we are living in an alternative reality?

 

One pill makes you larger
 
And one pill makes you small
And the ones that mother gives you
Don’t do anything at all
Go ask Alice
When she’s ten feet tall

And if you go chasing rabbits
And you know you’re going to fall
Tell ’em a hookah smoking caterpillar
Has given you the call to
Call Alice
When she was just small
When the men on the chessboard
Get up and tell you where to go
And you’ve just had some kind of mushroom
And your mind is moving low
Go ask Alice
I think she’ll know
When logic and proportion
Have fallen sloppy dead
And the White Knight is talking backwards
And the Red Queen’s “off with her head!”
Remember what the doormouse said;
“Feed YOUR HEAD…
Feed your head”

“Senators McCain and Graham, you have sat too long for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of G-d, go!”

H/T: Predictable History, unpredictable past

From the post:  Rand Paul and his epic rant

 

“They say Lewis Carroll is fiction,” Paul said. “Alice never fell down a rabbit hole and the White Queen’s caustic judgments are not really a threat to your security. Or has America the Beautiful become Alice’s Wonderland?” Paul then looked down and began reading directly from Carroll’s text: “‘No, no,’ said the queen. ‘Sentence first; Verdict afterwards.’ ‘Stuff and nonsense,’ Alice said widely — loudly. ‘The idea of having the sentence first?’ ‘Hold your tongue,’ said the queen, turning purple. ‘I won’t,’ said Alice.”

Instead the Queen’s infamous exclamation, “Off with her head,” Paul read his own, updated line: “‘Release the drones,’ said the queen, as she shouted at the top of her voice.”

By connecting the Alice story to the drones debate, Paul was echoing the judge who early this year ruled that the Justice Department memos on the program could remain secret. Judge Colleen McMahon wrote in her ruling, “The Alice-in-Wonderland nature of this pronouncement is not lost on me.”

Posted in Government. Tags: , , , , . 4 Comments »

Gingrich: ‘McCain’s attack on Paul sad’

March 9, 2013 — bunkerville

 Gingrich takes on McCain and calls him sad. Understatement of the year. The Grand Old Party should be declared dead. The word “Old” needs to be replaced with new. As the song says, “Get out of the old road if you can’t lend a hand, cause the times they are a changing. A nice little rant going here. What troubles me is they never talk about Al-alwaki’s son that was blasted away a week after his father was killed while sitting in a  restaurant.

 Gingrich said he was “disappointed” by McCain’s decision to “lecture” Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) and those senators who joined him in his Wednesday filibuster. “I don’t know what’s happened to John McCain, but I find this very sad,” Gingrich said. “So, who are you with?” Blitzer asked Gingrich pointedly regarding the feud between the Senate GOP’s younger and older members over the Obama administration’s drone warfare program. “The McCains or the Rand Pauls?”

“Well, I’m really disappointed in John McCain, and I’m very saddened by it,” Gingrich replied. “McCain, in his younger years, was a great maverick. He took on his party all the time.”

The idea that he’s now lecturing the next generation because they have the guts to stand up, which is I — I would have thought John McCain we do have applauded them and he would have said, I may not agree with you in detail, but I’m proud of the fact that you’re standing up for your beliefs, you’re fighting.
Gingrich added that Paul was correct to question the Department of Justice’s presumed legal authority to execute and American citizen on U.S. soil without due process via a drone strike.

“I mean, if our Constitution means anything, it means that your government can’t capriciously kill you without the rule of law,” Gingrich asserted. “And it was very clear from the attorney general’s earlier letters that they were reserving the right — remember, we’re not talking about a combatant engaged in fighting against the US. The minute you do that, you lose all your rights.”

Posted in War on Terror. Tags: , , , , , , , , , , . 12 Comments »

Rand Paul epic rant – Filibusters on

March 7, 2013 — bunkerville

 This is what we have come to. Rand Paul gives America a wake up call. Anyone listening?

Brennan Sidesteps Query on Drone Kills in U.S.

In written answers to Senate Intelligence Committee questions released Friday, CIA director nominee John Brennan would not say whether the U.S. could conduct drone strikes inside the United States — only that it did not intend to do so. Roll Call

FBI Director: I have to check to see if Obama can kill citizens on U.S. soil

FBI Director Robert Mueller on Wednesday said he would have to go back and check with the Department of Justice whether Attorney General Eric Holder’s “three criteria” for the targeted killing of Americans also applied to Americans inside the U.S.

Rand Paul Reads From Alice In Wonderland During CIA Filibuster | Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) stood up in the Senate chamber just before noon on Wednesday and declared his intention to “speak until I can no longer speak” in opposition to the nomination John Brennan for the position of CIA director. Without the 41 Republican “no” votes needed to prevent a cloture vote and block Brennan’s nomination, Paul was forced to halt the proceedings by standing and speaking for as long as he could.

“I rise today to begin to filibuster John Brennan’s nomination for the CIA,” Paul began. “I will speak as long as it takes takes, until the alarm is sounded from coast to coast that our Constitution is important, that your rights to trial by jury are precious, that no American should be killed by a drone on American soil without first being charged with a crime, without first being found to be guilty by a court.”

Paul repeated his fears that if the Obama administration could justify the drone strike that killed American citizen Anwar Al-Awlaki in Yemen, what’s to stop the government from killing U.S. citizens while they are “sitting in a café” on American soil. But shortly after he began his filibuster, Paul turned to external source for inspiration: Lewis Carroll’s literary classic Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

“They say Lewis Carroll is fiction,” Paul said. “Alice never fell down a rabbit hole and the White Queen’s caustic judgments are not really a threat to your security. Or has America the Beautiful become Alice’s Wonderland?” Paul then looked down and began reading directly from Carroll’s text: “‘No, no,’ said the queen. ‘Sentence first; Verdict afterwards.’ ‘Stuff and nonsense,’ Alice said widely — loudly. ‘The idea of having the sentence first?’ ‘Hold your tongue,’ said the queen, turning purple. ‘I won’t,’ said Alice.”

Instead the Queen’s infamous exclamation, “Off with her head,” Paul read his own, updated line: “‘Release the drones,’ said the queen, as she shouted at the top of her voice.”

By connecting the Alice story to the drones debate, Paul was echoing the judge who early this year ruled that the Justice Department memos on the program could remain secret. Judge Colleen McMahon wrote in her ruling, “The Alice-in-Wonderland nature of this pronouncement is not lost on me.”

As of 2pm ET, Sen. Paul has been speaking for more than two hours straight without stopping.

Posted in War on Terror. Tags: , , , , , , . 13 Comments »

Filibuster Reform On The Agenda For 2011?

December 23, 2010 — bunkerville

Call me in denial. I started to hear this drumbeat when I wandered off the reservation and stumbled over to MSNBC. No, tell me no. Are they really ready to make the big move? You read and you decide.

National Journal reports that the incoming Senate Democratic Caucus appears to have majority support for a reform of the Senate’s filibuster rules:

All Democratic senators returning next year have signed a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., urging him to consider action to change long-sacrosanct filibuster rules.

The letter, delivered this week, expresses general frustration with what Democrats consider unprecedented obstruction and asks Reid to take steps to end those abuses. While it does not urge a specific solution, Democrats said it demonstrates increased backing in the majority for a proposal, championed by Sen. Tom Udall, D-N.M., and others, weaken the minority’s ability to tie the Senate calendar into parliamentary knots.

Among the chief revisions that Democrats say will likely be offered: Senators could not initiate a filibuster of a bill before it reaches the floor unless they first muster 40 votes for it, and they would have to remain on the floor to sustain it. That is a change from current rules, which require the majority leader to file a cloture motion to overcome an anonymous objection to a motion to proceed, and then wait 30 hours for a vote on it.

More: Outside the Beltway

Posted in Government. Tags: , , . 14 Comments »