Fresh from his marathon filibuster of the proposed extension to the government snooping enabling section of the Patriot Act, Senator Rand Paul slammed the President this morning, accusing Obama of being deceitful over the issue.
Appearing on CBS, Paul noted “Here’s the thing about the president: He’s disingenuous about this,” the Kentucky Republican said on ‘This Morning.’ “The president started this program through executive order — he could end it anytime.”
The Senator also noted that the NSA bulk collection was recently ruled illegal by a federal appellate panel.
“Why doesn’t he stop it? What’s he waiting for?” Mr. Paul said. “He [says], ‘Oh, Congress can stop it.’ He started it on his own. He should stop it, and I’ve asked the president repeatedly, ‘Stop the program.’ “
Paul also refused to be drawn into an argument with anchor Charlie Rose who accused him of using the NSA issue to “sell books”.
Instead Paul stuck to the point, noting that he is not being unreasonable, “I’m just asking for two amendments and a simple majority vote” Paul stated.
“I think sometimes my party gets all caught up in the Second Amendment, which is fine, but we don’t protect the Fourth Amendment enough,” he added.” But actually I think neither party ends up protecting the Fourth Amendment enough, which is the right to privacy.”
No agreement was reached during Senate hearings this past weekend on extending expiring portions of the Patriot Act. Paul spoke for some 10 hours in an effort to block a compromise bill, called the USA Freedom Act, in addition to several proposed short-term extensions of the program.
“I’m right in line with what the founders would have fought for and I am proud of the fight,” Paul added.
“The Constitution is inconvenient, but the thing is, we obey the Constitution because it protects the rights of all individuals.” The Senator urged.
It was also recently revealed in a Justice Department Inspector General report found that “the bulk collection of data hasn’t cracked one case.”
In other words, no terrorist plots have been foiled by the government spying on Americans.
In a further interview on Fox News, Paul noted that giving government too much authority always ends in abuse of power and “systemic bias”.
“We did it to the Japanese Americans in World War II. We did it to civil rights protesters during the ’60s and to Vietnam War protesters. We just started grabbing them up and started looking at behavior we didn’t like. So the right to dissent in a free country is very important and some would say this has a chilling effect on a right to dissent,” Paul said.
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Steve Watson is a London based writer and editor for Alex Jones’ Infowars.com, and Prisonplanet.com. He has a Masters Degree in International Relations from the School of Politics at The University of Nottingham, and a Bachelor Of Arts Degree in Literature and Creative Writing from Nottingham Trent University.
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