Ethics

Is Rand Paul Still Your Hero?

Watch Rand Paul agree with Eric Holder less than 24 hours after his 13 hour filibuster.

On what constitutes an imminent threat:

“Anybody bringing a weapon to a place, assembling a weapon, using a weapon…”

What Eric Holder has enunciated, and what Rand Paul categorizes as a situation that would justify the use of lethal force on a citizen, are essentially the same thing. The only sphere of difference is that Rand Paul is invoking the imagery of a drone targeting someone sitting in a coffee shop here in America, and as you know that kind of scenario is pure fantasy. Policy outlined by Eric Holder doesn’t even explicitly state that a drone would be used.

Eric Holder has made it quite clear that, outside of extreme cases, we would rely on our existing law enforcement agencies to deal with any emerging threat. And there is nothing unprecedented about that. Law enforcement agencies already make life and death decisions on a daily basis and sometimes dispatch threats with lethal force.

Cult of personality is driving drone hysteria, not empirical reality.