Impediments on the power of government aren't particularly popular to those who wield the power of government, regardless of the branch they occupy.
That said, I've had it running for around and hour and have found it interesting for no other reason than understanding how filibusters actually work. From what I can tell, he has just been spending time reading articles critical of drone strikes or reading other documents while providing commentary on them as he goes.
He's even been taking time to eat a snack which provides comedic pauses in the listening experiences.
Rand also gets small breaks from others who come forward to ask questions - most of which seem to be staged to help him cover additional points, reiterate his already made points, or just generally use up more clock.
Based on the view behind him, it appears that all other senators need not be present while he speaks. Is that true and has this always been the case? I'd imagine that the tactic might be more compelling and useful if everyone had to sit there and listen.
Senators would get very little done if they had to sit in the Senate Chamber any time any one of them had something he or she wanted to say. They're all pretty garrulous.
http://www.amazon.com/Republic-Lost-Money-Corrupts-Congress/...
While the House puts some limits on debates, to move things along, the Senate is a more deliberative body (by design) and therefore doesn't vote on an issue until it has been completely debated. There is no strict definition of "completely debated" beyond "someone still has something to say." As any half-awake hacker no doubt will notice, this means that you can prevent a law from getting voted on, and therefore passing, by simply not ending the debate. This is what a filibuster is.
There are technically some restrictions around debate, and the band-aid fix that a supermajority vote can stop debate and bring a vote, but that's about the only thing stopping it in practice.
The main technical restriction is that, if the Senate doesn't have anything else to do, any one Senator only gets one monologue. They can't stop one day, and then filibuster again the next day. This rule can be stretched, but not broken. Hence, the content of most filibusters tend to be long space-fillers, which is what you're seeing. There's also a rule that the debate must be 'on topic,' but that's too vaguely defined to be worth anything. Famously, one Senator said something to the effect of "this law is not in the interests of my constituents, who are as follows:" and then proceed to literally read the phone book for a few hours.
"... 'A lawyer with his briefcase can steal more than a hundred men with guns.' Now, I don't know how the hell that relates to this argument, but I thought it was a good quote."
He vows to speak as long as he's physically able.
This canard has been debunked so many times on HN that I've lost count, but carry on as if the constitutional, legislative, ethical and historical justification for drone strikes had not been repeatedly explained in copious detail. It's much easier to pretend there's a conspiracy of silence and that nobody has ever stepped up to present an argument for the administration's position.
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=site%3Anews.ycombinator.com+constitutio...
Now, all of this is couched in the most justifiable of terminology and is crafted to follow the broad outlines of judicial procedure but the fact remains that the administration has given themselves this authority and retain whatever oversight, if any, is involved with it.
This is utterly antithetical to the principles set forth in our constitution and if any of the founding fathers were alive today I'm quite certain they would vomit at the idea.
Congress gave the administration the authority. You may dispute the wisdom of this, you may think it should rescind that authority, you may think the scope of that authority should be more narrowly defined - all entirely reasonable points of view. But when you claim the administration is being autocratic, you are simply, factually wrong.
http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/PLAW-107publ40/pdf/PLAW-107publ...
This law has been in place for almost 12 years, and you are surely aware the US is still at war and that this war is not expected to conclude until next year. We have discussed this issue before and you know perfectly well that the US has been at war for over a decade. It's disingenuous of you to argue as if you weren't aware of this.
Now, therefore, be it resolved by [Congress]:
[Section 1 is the title of the act]
Section 2 - Authorization For Use of United States Armed Forces
(a) IN GENERAL- That the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.
It's not the case that Congress declared war and the executive branch granted itself authority by extension. The phrase 'be it resolved ... [t]hat the President is authorized...' is the grant of authority.
A lot of people think this is so broad as to amount to a blank check, and I agree. But neither the Bush nor Obama administrations have have had to perform any legal conjuring tricks to derive this authority. Congress gave the President the authority in very clear terms. The President's authority to determine who is or is not a target under this legislation is absolute; it's not subject to qualifications or review by other branches. The language of the legislation is about as plain as it gets.
It's horribly over-broad and open-ended, but Congress has only themselves to blame (and they can rein in the Act if they wish as well, or at least make the President try to veto it).
The 2001 AUMF is specific: force is authorized against nations, persons, and organizations involved in 9/11, so long as that force is used to prevent future attacks.
The administration cannot use this construction to declare Wikileaks a terrorist organization and drone strike them.
I am interested in which principle of the Constitution you find this situation antithetical to.
What is the legal process for being declared an al qaeda leader? What is the legal process for anywhere outside of the US being declared a battlefield? What is the legal process for summary execution of someone who the administration has decided is an al qaeda leader? In each case the answer is: it is entirely up to the administration.
Yes, as a matter of constitutional law it is certainly possible for congress to declare war on a transnational entity and effectively designate the entire world outside the borders of the US as a potential war zone, under the discretion of the president, but I would say that rather twists the spirit of the constitution rather too far.
If you want to come back and tell me that the problem is that we declared war on an ideology or a label, I will ABSOLUTELY sign that petition. Just be aware that a majority of Americans probably won't be signing it with us.
Anyway, that's neither here nor there. Today we have a situation where the entire world could be a battlefield and we haven't the slightest clue how to deal with the troubling problems that entails. So far our best efforts have been for the administration to draw up a secret internal white paper on how to make sure they only execute the right people and for everyone else to rely mostly on hope. This is not a situation our existing laws are remotely up to tackling, and yet it will surely become more and more the norm over the next few decades. We need something more than "well, the administration thinks they killed the right guy".
I'm not even opposed to the idea of military drones, really. I just think you have a bad habit of responding to people who disagree with you by telling them that they're too stupid for you to talk to. Pity.
You haven't answered the question on the morality of bombing Peenemunde (the V2 construction facilities), over 700 Polish civilians were killed in one bombing alone. Do you have an answer?
I refuse to shy away from the moral complexities of warfare, but that doesn't mean I refuse to acknowledge that there are moral issues in warfare. There very much are. And right now our country is installing legal and formal precedents which are sincerely disquieting in that regard.
In regards to your quip, the phrase "individual suspected terrorists" should have about 10 metric fuck-tons of asterisks after it. Because "suspected terrorists" are pretty much anyone the administration designates as such. And "individual" is pretty much defined as "anyone within the blast radius of a hellfire missile when a 'terrorist' is chosen to be executed". Not that drone attacks are even the entirety of the problem. Go read up on the war we've been fighting in Yemen and in the horn of Africa for the past several years.
Was that ever a question? He was replying to your points.
The implication that I was drawing from the line of argumentation is that if you can find it moral to carpet bomb whole cities during WWII then you should be able to find a moral justification to bomb specific aggressors in 2013, especially given the insanely higher risk of collateral damage during WWII.
The converse would then apply: If you can't find it moral to ever have collateral damage occur in 2013 then you shouldn't be able to find it moral to have been done in WWII, as the atrocities during WWII were of horrifyingly higher orders of magnitude.
So the question wasn't for him; it was for you.
Even if "suspected terrorists" had the 10 metric fuck-tons of asterisks that you say should be there, there would still have been much more accurate planning going into each military operation in 2013 than there was in 1941-1945 (and probably by an order of magnitude). I'm presuming that you found at least most of those WWII bombing attacks could be justified as the grim price of war; what is the difference now? That would help better clarify your position.
Then lobby for the repeal or amendment of the AUMF by Congress. The executive Branch is currently authorized by law to make those sorts of decisions.
This is not true. Both the Senate and House Intelligence committees have the right to see everything the President and the intelligence community see. If they aren't happy with how the decisions are being made on drone strikes, they can change the law that ultimately dictates how those decisions are made.
And that is the real problem with what Rand Paul is doing. If he has a problem with how drone strikes are being conducted, then he should be pushing to change the law that governs drone strikes. He should not be holding up a Presidential nomination.
For some reason or other we have become averse to amending the constitution since the 26th amendment took place in 1971. (There's a 27th amendment that occurred in 1992, but that's kind of an aberration because it was submitted to the States in 1789 and then almost forgotten about for 200 years; there was no deadline on the original submission.)
The "for some reason" is obvious. Look at the amendments passed since prohibition was repealed in 1933.
22nd: Presidential term limits
23rd: D.C. gets to be part of the Electoral College
24th: Prohibits poll taxes
25th: Relating to Presidential succession
26th: Prohibits age discrimination in voting
Notice the trend? They're all related to elections. Because that's practically the only thing left that expansive readings of the commerce clause and other constitutional provisions and outright power grabs haven't given Congress and the Executive the power to do through normal legislation and executive action.
Why go through the trouble of amending the constitution when the courts allow you to just pass a law or issue an executive order?
It's a shame that this was totally and completely unpredictable.