“In Senator Graham’s world, the Constitution doesn’t exist,” Mace wrote. “In Senator Graham’s world, the entire Bill of Rights is negotiable.”
Run Nancy Run!
Posted on 06/10/2013 7:59:54 AM PDT by cotton1706
Speaking on “Fox News Sunday,” Rand Paul had strong words for the National Security Agency. “Get a warrant, go after a terrorist or a murderer or a rapist,” he said. “But don’t troll through a billion phone records every day.”
The Kentucky senator went on to threaten a class-action lawsuit against such trolling. His remarks capped a week of bipartisan outrage over revelations that the federal government’s global surveillance program was much broader in scope than anticipated.
While Verizon was the first carrier implicated, there are now reports that the NSA has clandestine access to real-time user data for customers of as many as 50 companies. Even one of the Republican congressmen behind the Patriot Act cried foul.
Seizing phone records of millions of innocent people is excessive and un-American,” Wisconsin Rep. James Sensenbrenner, a past chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said in a statement.
But not everyone in the GOP is on board with this great privacy awakening. “Sen. Rand Paul, he’s a libertarian, and in Rand Paul’s world you have almost no defenses against terrorists,” blustered South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham. “In Rand Paul’s world, you can’t hold somebody for questioning who’s been involved in an attack on our country.”
This broadside elicited a fierce reaction from South Carolinian Nancy Mace, the first woman to graduate from the Citadel—and a possible Graham primary challenger. “In Senator Graham’s world, the Constitution doesn’t exist,” Mace wrote. “In Senator Graham’s world, the entire Bill of Rights is negotiable.”
Mace zinged Graham for believing “arming al-Qaeda in Syria is a good idea.” She argued Graham “says we’re fighting for freedom but is the first to surrender all of them.” Mace concluded, “Maybe Senator Graham has been living in a world of his own for too long.”
Give Graham credit for consistency: unlike other Republican opportunists, he wants Barack Obama to exercise the same untrammeled executive powers he believes belonged to George W. Bush. No matter who the commander-in-chief is, he says America is a battlefield.
That’s why the ascendancy of Rand Paul—who would be as quick to criticize warrantless surveillance under President Romney, Ryan or Rubio—tears open a real debate within the Republican Party.
For one side maintains that low taxes and the sanctity of innocent human life can somehow coexist with permanent war. The other side realizes that if the homeland is a battlefield, we must live under something closer to martial law than the Bill of Rights—a proposition incompatible with limited government.
While Graham does not speak for as many Republicans as he did during the Bush years, he makes one argument that is still likely to resonate on the right: “I see the threat to the average American, radical Islam coming to our backyard trying to destroy our way of life. He sees the threat [from] the government that’s trying to stop the attack.”
South Carolina’s senior senator accuses Paul of believing that people in our government are a “bunch of Nazis” rather than “patriotic Americans.”
The trump card for McCain-Graham Republicans and their many allies in the Democratic Party is that they can claim various federal actions have prevented terrorist attacks while the alleged proof is usually classified.
When terrorist attacks fail or do not occur, the surveillance state is vindicated. When terrorism happens, it proves the surveillance state needs more power. To think otherwise is to brand patriotic Americans Nazis, which of course only unpatriotic conservatives do.
But so far it is Paul’s defense of the Fourth Amendment—conveniently violated by a Democratic administration—that is capturing conservatives’ imaginations. Tea Party groups are railing against the NSA alongside the IRS.
Grassroots conservatives seem to be standing with Rand rather than rolling their eyes at the wacko birds. They are quoting Sen. Barack Obama, who was skeptical of trading liberty for security, against President Obama.
Can trend endure past the current administration? Only time will tell. We may not be living in Rand Paul’s world or Lindsey Graham’s, but the next few elections will help determine whose party the GOP is.
I guess it's asking too much for Lindsey to ponder the disconnect of our current CinC simultaneously claiming the war is all but over while expanding the weapons used in such, all the while declaring the real enemy is the same group of people the IRS has illegally targeted under his watch.
Nah, nothing to be concerned about here. He has his Senate pension and perks and will make millions of dollars off his political connections when he retires from the Senate.
I’ve never heard of Nancy Mace, but she sounds very impressive.
If the NSA had pictures of Lindthey Graham with little boys, it would explain a lot.
I think she’s definitely gearing up for a run. Did you see her piece on Redstate last week?
“In Senator Graham’s world, the Constitution doesn’t exist,” Mace wrote. “In Senator Graham’s world, the entire Bill of Rights is negotiable.”
Run Nancy Run!
I,m pretty sure Linda is the enemy.
If the winds shall shift in a bad direction, Lindsey will side with the democrats.
“If the winds shall shift in a bad direction, Lindsey will side with the democrats.”
He doesn’t even need any wind.
And in Linseed the RINO's world you have no Constitution I guess....
And in Linseed the RINO's world you have no Constitution I guess....
You go girl!!
This to them is "profiling" but they, urged on by the ACLU prefer to profile TEA party folk in Storm Lake, Iowa or Watumka, Alabama!!!
“South Carolina’s senior senator accuses Paul of believing that people in our government are a “bunch of Nazis” rather than “patriotic Americans.””
What a jackass, they are a “bunch of Nazis” The IRS and NSA
scandals are proof of that. Mace is right, Graham has been
living in a world of his own.
I suppose we could “soften” it a bit and say that the majority of people in our government are “acting like Nazis”.
If Lindsey Graham were serious about the need to gain information from Americans at all costs, he would have been apoplectic when the surviving Tsarnaev brother was read his Miranda rights, thereby shutting him up and denying actionable intelligence to law-enforcement agents.
However, the only thing I remember Lindsey Graham being angry about over the past few months have been other Republicans — those whom he and John McCain have sneeringly designated ‘’Wacko Birds’’ such as Rand Paul and Ted Cruz.
If Senator Graham hated terrorists as much as he hates the Wacko Birds, his every public utterance would consist of passionate pleas to deny American rights to captured terrorists, no jury trials, and re-introduce waterboarding, etc., in order to keep Americans safe. But alas, Lindsey Grahams’ every public utterance seems to be a diatribe against his fellow Republicans.
Nice try Grahamnesty. Now, you may return to your normal RINOsity.
You are slime.
Then the American sheeple voted to neuter our military for at least the next generation in November.
We no longer have the choice between the world's finest military who can project our power anywhere in the world and one which can (maybe?) defend our interests closer to home.
Our current options are between a military which can (maybe?) defend our interest closer to home and one which can be used by the regime in power to maintain that power. Call me a peacenik if you must, but that's the facts.
I disagree. America is not a battlefield - Yet.
If American voters were informed and had any sense this would be the ‘turning point’ in American politics and our government.
I don’t hold out much hope though.
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