Free Republic

He gave the voters a good look at him -- and now it looks like he's gone.Last October, for the third time in three years, Sen. Rand Paul made the cover of Time magazine. The headline: "The Most Interesting Man in American Politics." The New York Times Magazine had just put him on the cover that August, with a lot of edgy graphics proclaiming him a "Major Threat" to the Republican establishment. It made sense, or it seemed to. In the very, very early polls, the Kentucky senator was running neck-and-neck with former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush for the top...

Republican Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul earned a standing ovation at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) Friday, with members of the conservative activist crowd chanting “President Paul” at one point. Paul made clear overtures to a presidential run. The video of his speech is below. Here are some highlights: “Your rights are in your DNA and the government, quite frankly, can get over it.” “I say that your phone records are yours! I say that the phone records of law-abiding citizens are none of their damn business.” “Hillary’s war made us less safe. … As Hillary was declaring victory in...

Calling Sen. Rand Paul’s rhetoric regarding the Federal Reserve “dangerous and irresponsible,” via Politico, the Wall Street-backed establishment GOP is pushing back on what’s become a Paul talking point, just as it was for his father, Rep. Ron Paul. Paul could face a significant challenge if he emerges from Iowa with a legitimate shot at the Republican nomination. Because experts say he gets many of his arguments about the Fed flat wrong. And the establishment wing of the GOP — backed by piles of Wall Street money — views Paul’s approach to the Fed as dangerous and irresponsible. “He seems...

DENVER — Colorado already is being sued by two neighboring states for legalizing marijuana. Now, the state faces groundbreaking lawsuits from its own residents, who are asking a federal judge to order the new recreational industry to close. The owners of a mountain hotel and a southern Colorado horse farm argue in a pair of lawsuits filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Denver that the 2012 marijuana-legalization measure has hurt their property and that the marijuana industry is stinky and attracts unsavory visitors.

Kentucky’s junior senator, Rand Paul, gave a provocative talk at the Heritage Foundation on January 13, in which he discussed the role of the judiciary. During that talk, he said something that most American lawyers have been conditioned to think of as heresy: he said that the Supreme Court’s 1905 decision in Lochner v. New York was right. Saying anything good about Lochner among the vast majority of American lawyers and judges is like telling a group of college history professors that Calvin Coolidge was a great president. Senator Paul has the courage to say controversial things and doesn’t fear...

About six years ago, one of my producers at the Fox News Channel received a call out of the blue in which the caller asked if I'd be interested in coming on "The Colbert Report." At the time, I was generally unfamiliar with the genre of late-night comedy because I am usually in dreamland when it airs. Colbert was hilarious in his haughty imitation of the excesses of my Fox colleague Bill O'Reilly. I did not and do not know what his personal politics are, but his shtick was playing O'Reilly to a T. In fact, at one point during...

Senator Rand Paul is calling for a declaration of war against the Islamic State, a move that promises to shake up the debate over the military campaign in Iraq and Syria as President Obama prepares to ask Congress to grant him formal authority to use force. Mr. Paul, a likely presidential candidate who has emerged as one of the Republican Party’s most cautious voices on military intervention, offered a very circumscribed definition of war in his proposal, which he outlined in an interview on Saturday. He would, for instance, limit the duration of military action to one year and significantly...

Last year, I shared some libertarian humor relating to Valentine’s Day. This year, we’re going to be a bit more on the wonky side. Using roses as an example, we’re going to explore how the invisible hand of the market produces amazing results. Here’s a great new video from Marginal Revolution University. Narrated by Professor Alex Tabarrok of George Mason University’s economics department, it explains how consumers have amazing access to millions of roses even though (actually because) there’s no agency or department in charge of Valentine’s Day.

Regular readers know that I don’t approve of drug use, but that I also favor legalization because the Drug War has been a costly and ineffective failure.(And it’s led to horrible policies such as intrusive money-laundering laws and Orwellian asset-forfeiture laws).So I was happy when folks in Colorado voted to decriminalize marijuana use, even if part of me didn’t like the idea that politicians would gain a new source of tax revenue.If nothing else, what’s happening in Colorado (and Washington state) will be an interesting social experiment.And even though we only have a modest bit of data, I’m going to be...

e is what you need to remember – Rand Paul is never going to get Andy Cable’s, Don Kass’, or Doug Gross’s vote. Spiker is tasked with organizing the people who he has a good rapport with. This is nothing new to politics. Campaigns of every shape and size target certain coalitions of voters, and Spiker is tasked to work with the libertarian leaning voters. Besides all of that, Spiker proved that he was one of the better organizers in Iowa in 2012. People tend to overlook the fact that his candidate received more votes at the Ames Straw Poll...

Requesting help to avoid a "costly and time-consuming legal challenge," U.S. Sen. Rand Paul is asking members of the Republican Party of Kentucky's central committee to create a presidential caucus in 2016. In a letter dated Feb. 9, Paul told GOP leaders that an earlier presidential preference vote would give Kentuckians "more leverage to be relevant." "As you may have heard, you, as a member of the Kentucky Republican Central Committee, will be the one to decide if you want to help me get an equal chance at the nomination," Paul wrote. The letter went out to hundreds of other...

Michigan Rep. Justin Amash was the sole Republican in the House to vote against the latest version of the bill advancing the Keystone XL Pipeline. Amash says he supports the construction of the pipeline, but he opposes legislation singling out one company. He has previously voted present on Keystone, but the addition of “new, unrelated sections empowering the EPA and the federal government with respect to local energy efficiency” pushed him to a no. In a statement published on his Facebook page, the tea party favorite said that the bill includes a lot of cronyism. Since 2013 he has argued...

There’s a lot of attention given to the art of explicating the motivations of Rand Paul, and the disparate coalition he’s attempting to bring together in his fledgling 2016 campaign. The latest is from the New York Times, which adopts the classic understanding of Paul, the politician: “As he works to build a broad national following, Mr. Paul is trying to stitch together very disparate worlds. There are those who are young, more affluent and likely to vote Democratic. There are the establishment, center-right elements of the Republican Party. And there are his most ardent libertarian fans who are...

There has been a great deal of overblown talk about the alleged “libertarian moment” that the United States is experiencing just about now, and there is a reason that the Right, broadly speaking, has taken an intellectual turn in the libertarian direction. The first and most important is the ascendance of Barack Obama, whose vision of effectively unlimited government gives conservatives the willies. But there are deeper reasons, too: The Right believes, not without some reason, that the main reason we ended up with a disastrous Obama-Pelosi-Reid triumvirate government — the brief years of which imposed damage that will take...

DENVER — Public tax money very likely paid for welfare recipients to smoke the equivalent of about 17 pounds of weed (or approximately 9,000 joints) in 2014. Compared with what the rest of Colorado ingested, that’s a small percentage, but controversial none the less. ... the Colorado Department of Human Services calls the “Quest” Electronic Benefit Transfer Card under its Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Cash Assistance program. This account is not meant to be used for food, rather “a family’s most basic needs.” It’s essentially a bank debit card, loaded up with from $200 to $1,000 in cash every...

ulture: An unlikely issue has entered the infant 2016 presidential campaign: Vaccines and required vaccinations. Let's hope the fact there's no scientific link to autism or anything else isn't lost in the political fray. Candidates will often look for an edge over their opponents. Thus, both New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky recently suggested that, while vaccinations are good, forcing parents to vaccinate their children might be too much. We believe vaccines are safe and should be routine, but concern about parents' rights is not unreasonable. What really gripes us, however, is listening to the...

Public Health: In their ongoing effort to politicize everything, liberals are trying to blame Republicans for the measles outbreak. But it was left-wingers who drove the anti-vaccine crusade that contributed to the outbreak.

Rand Paul does a lot of interviews -- a lot. This, from time to time, has gotten him in trouble. Rarely, though, has it gone as poorly as this. Speaking Monday afternoon with CNBC, Paul: 1) Reiterated his contention that vaccines should be voluntary. 2) Said this: "I have heard of many tragic cases of walking, talking, normal children who wound up with profound mental disorders after vaccines." (Michele Bachmann said something similar during the 2012 presidential campaign. It didn't go over well.) 3) Actually shushed the anchor when he thought she wasn't allowing him to answer her questions.

Some of the most influential players in big-money conservative politics gathered late last month to discuss government’s role in society, but their focus kept shifting to a less weighty topic: Rand Paul’s outfit. The Kentucky senator and prospective GOP presidential candidate — whose libertarian politics mesh with those of the billionaire megadonor brothers Charles and David Koch — appeared at the annual winter meeting of the Koch donor network wearing a boxy blue blazer, faded jeans and cowboy boots.

Rand Paul: Most vaccines should be ‘voluntary’ By ADAM B. LERNER 2/2/15 2:42 PM EST Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) waded into the debate over vaccinations Monday, telling conservative talk show host Laura Ingraham that he thinks most vaccines should be “voluntary.” Paul, an ophthamologist and likely 2016 White House hopeful, expressed particular concern over mandatory vaccinations for sexually transmitted diseases. He criticized former Texas Gov. Rick Perry for his executive order mandating that Texas children receive the HPV vaccine. “I’m not anti-vaccine at all,” Paul said, but “I think that’s a personal decision.” Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/02/rand-paul-vaccines-114834.html#ixzz3QhA3J7zr