Rand Paul's thug has his day in court

By Richard K. Barry 

Here's an interesting update on a post I wrote back in October. You may recall that a Rand Paul campaign worker stomped on the head of liberal activist Lauren Valle, who was engaged in a bit of peaceful political theatre at a campaign event during the Kentucky senate race, which, of course, Paul eventually won.

It seems the perpetrator of the violence, some jerk by the name of Tim Proffit, will serve probation and pay medical expenses stemming from the assault.

According to a piece in Roll Call:

Profitt acknowledged that prosecutors had enough evidence to win a conviction but he didn't admit guilt, according to Assistant Fayette County Attorney Jackie Alexander. He will undergo unsupervised probation for a year and pay $600 for Valle's medical bills.

Valle was posing outside the debate as a representative of RubliCorp, a fake company invented by the liberal group MoveOn.org to criticize Republican ties to corporate America. She had been trying to give Paul a RepubliCorp employee of the month "award" when she was confronted.

It seems to me that Mr. Proffit got off easy. The right is all for law and order as long it doesn't involve their transgressions, I suppose.

I don't intend to rank the significance of various forms of violence, but there is little that pisses me off more than violence committed against people engaged in non-violent political speech. There is no way that the punishment here is appropriate considering the actions of this bastard.

Give me a break.

To refresh your memory, here's some footage from the incident:

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

Craziest Republican of the Day: Rand Paul

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Tea Party Republican Rand Paul is a libertarian, and on occasion admirably so (like when he opposes the Patriot Act), but it seems that his enthusiasm for liberty is disturbingly selective and comes with an unhealthy dose of typical Republican police-state authoritarianism. As he told Sean Hannity last Friday:

I'm not for profiling people on the color of their skin, or on their religion, but I would take into account where they've been traveling and perhaps, you might have to indirectly take into account whether or not they've been going to radical political speeches by religious leaders. It wouldn't be that they are Islamic. But if someone is attending speeches from someone who is promoting the violent overthrow of our government, that's really an offense that we should be going after — they should be deported or put in prison.

That's right, this libertarian, this oh-so-courageous defender of freedom, thinks that you should be put in jail if you attend a political event he doesn't approve of, an event at which "radical" things are said.

Now, despite his claim, he was probably thinking primarily of Islamic "radical political speeches," but whether Islamic or not, define radical.

Does it just mean "promoting the violent overthrow of our government"? But, then, where would the line be drawn? And who would draw it? And don't you think "radical" would come to mean so much more?

And what about the pesky little thing known as the First Amendment?

This would be the thin end of the wedge straight to a slippery slope.

But perhaps this should come as no surprise, As Think Progress notes, Paul actually isn't as much of an advocate of civil liberties as his reputation might suggest:

[A]side from his admirable stance on the Patriot Act, Paul's record shows he's hardly the paragon of civil liberties he claims to be, but rather is "indistinguishable from the rest of the GOP on national security issues," The American Prospect's Adam Serwer noted last year. He's said he will "always fight" to keep GITMO open; has said "[f]oreign terrorists do not deserve the protections of our Constitution"; and has never taken a strong public stance against torture, staying silent most recently after the killing of Osama bin Laden.

"I believe that America can successfully protect itself against potential terrorists without sacrificing civil liberties," his website says. Apparently speech is not a civil liberty.

I guess his libertarianism is a matter of partisan and ideological convenience to him. He is when he is and isn't when he isn't. And when he isn't, as here, he's downright un-American.

**********

The good thing is, if there is any good here, he might just put himself in jail.

Yes, he attended an event at which a radical right-wing militia advocated extreme and treasonous violence -- and yet claims he didn't hear a thing! How convenient.
 

If they're for it, we're against it.

By Capt. Fogg

The natural state of men, before they were joined in society, was a war, and not simply, but a war of all against all.

-Libertas, Thomas Hobbes -


Scanning the Facebook page of my congresscritter, Tom Rooney (R-FL) I find the real interest not to be the simplistic banalities and the strained attempts to generate outrage against Barack Obama. It's not the continuing effort by Rooney to portray the assistance being given NATO's actions in Syria as a constitutional violation; it's more about the truly demented calls for impeachment by the people who post there; calls that remain in view without comment by Mr. Rooney, who claims that he maintains the page to be more "in touch" with the sentiments of his constituents rather than as a tool to promote irrational rage for political purposes.

If he has some constituents other than me who disagree with the "Oh I just hate, hate him" and "Oh he just makes me sick" and the "he uses the constitution to line his bird cage" swamp dwellers, they must indeed like me, be very reluctant to post comments there under their real names. He's created a milieu quite hostile to reason and reasonable people offering constructive criticism.

Yes, of course there are many questions about the legality of George W. Bush's legacy, some of which -- too much of which -- remains in place, but the War on Obama is not really based on his alleged and often misrepresented constitutional infractions, and we know it because they weren't presented as such during the previous administration and indeed were eagerly supported by the reactionary beasts who hang out on the Rooney page to congratulate themselves and outdo each other on the size of their hate. Indeed, that place is a microcosm of our war against ourselves, a war of all against all.

It's not that I like Senator Rand Paul or his familiar pose of principled outrage, but I am indeed on his side when it comes to addressing the real constitutional outrage of the Patriot Act. I have to smile at what may be the end of his naivete because it isn't the Democrats at war with the Leahy-Paul Amendment, designed to allow greater oversight of ever increasing Government warrantless surveillance powers under that cynically named act. It's the Republicans supporting precisely the kind of power they pretend to oppose while posturing as libertarians to the frothy-mouthed and furious rabble.

“Unfortunately, what we’re finding now is that the Democrats have agreed to allow me to have amendments but my own party is refusing to allow me to debate or present my amendments.”

Said Paul. Imagine that.

But as the man said, the joining of people into a society serves to prevent the chaos of nature, and I have to ask myself whether the effort to portray anything social or designed for the common good as the unqualified evil of Socialism, did not have the promotion of that very bellum omnium contra omnes; everyone at war with everyone and every man for himself as a purpose. Perhaps when everyone is against everyone, such things as consistent viewpoints are illusory as is anything resembling principle. If you're for it, I'm against it may be as close as we can get.

(Cross posted from Human Voices)

Elephant Dung #27: Rand Paul takes aim at Donald Trump's questionable Republican cred

Tracking the GOP Civil War

By Michael J.W. Stickings

(For an explanation of this ongoing series, see here. For previous entries, see here.)

I'm not exactly a fan of Rand Paul, the Tea Party Republican senator from Kentucky. But I've got to hand it to him, he's a funny guy and he's got a knack for hilarious one-line swipes at fellow Republicans. Earlier this month, he took aim at Newt Gingrich. Yesterday, his target was Donald Trump:

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) on Thursday took a swipe at billionaire businessman Donald Trump, demanding to see his "Republican registration."

While speaking at a breakfast with New Hampshire Republicans one day after "The Donald" visited the Granite State, Paul riffed off the potential GOP presidential candidate's "birther" questions.

"I've come to New Hampshire today because I'm very concerned," said Paul, according to The New York Times. "I want to see the original long-form certificate of Donald Trump's Republican registration."

Paul's comments follow up on some GOP-aligned groups' effort to discredit Trump as a conservative. The free-market Club for Growth has accused Trump of being a liberal for his previous support of universal healthcare and his desire to raise tariffs on China.

It's hard to be a successful Republican when you've got both the Tea Party (via Rand Paul) and the Club for Growth aligned against you. Which is no doubt partly why Trump has so enthusiastically embraced the whole Birther thing and is now channelling his racism (what else is it?) into suggesting that Obama is an affirmative action case.

Now, is Trump a Republican? Yes, no doubt. His wealth-based sense of entitlement and megalomania would seem to indicate that he leans to the right, as would his pro-business (or, to be more precise, pro-Trump business) views. But his own political history is mixed. He has espoused various liberal positions over the years, and he was a registered Democrat for years. As he himself has acknowledged, if prior to his current courting of the Republican base, he's an independent, and he has voted for and financially supported both Democrats and Republicans.

None of this should disqualify Trump from being a Republican today, but of course the Republican Party, and in particular its powerful Tea Party wing, is all about party purification. They're the new Bolsheviks. If you're not Republican enough, Republican as they define it, they'll purge you from the party. We're seeing this happen again and again, with the Tea Party and others on the right challenging even established conservatives like Orrin Hatch, Richard Lugar, and John Boehner. The Republican Party is descending into madness, as I've said many times, and all this ongoing purge is accelerating that descent.

Trump has the media platform, not to mention the temperament, to fight back against those who would challenge him, including Paul. But Paul's onto something. Birtherism aside, Trump just isn't the sort of Republican, if truly Republican at all, to win over enough of the grassroots base to win the nomination, even if he manages to lure some of the party establishment (like Ralph Reed). He's got the anti-Obama attack going, and that's sustaining his popularity in the party, but were he to run that popularity would likely fracture once he was actually subjected to any sort of sustained scrutiny of his record. In that sense, he's got a Romney problem, and it's the sort of problem that's virtually insurmountable. Just ask Mitt.

And just ask Rand, who threw a pile of dung at the upstart Trump. If The Donald insists on remaining in the Republican spotlight, there will no doubt be much more to come.