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While this is undoubtedly true for some senators, Paul seems like quite a poor choice of target for this criticism.

He has been very vocal in opposition of governmental encroachment on civil liberties during his senate term. He was, in fact, the last senator left in opposition to the extension of the Patriot Act.

Not to mention that he was only elected in 2010, well after a lot of this stuff had been implemented and reauthorized time and time again.

But to be fair—regardless of the reasons behind it—Paul endorsed Romney for president, who promised to contribute to expanding our spy state like Obama and his High Command.

I find it hard to imagine his father agreeing to do such a thing for any price.

To be fair to Paul, this is his first term -- he's been in the Senate for a bit longer than 2 years now. So he certainly wasn't involved in decisions made "long ago".

That said, I generally disagree with many of his stances, and think you're probably right that a lot of what he does is fundamentally political.

I don't understand why people accuse politicians of using politics. Isn't that like accusing a farmer of plowing a field?

Politicians can't get elected admitting they're politicians.

Yeah. That's one of the most absurd things about America: we force our public officials to lie, and then complain about it when they do.

In what other field do people apply for work by claiming to be not only ignorant of, but hostile to the job they're applying for? Everyone is Mister Smith going to Washington now, it's manufactured cynicism, and Americans seem to eat it up.

I remember, to my shame, voting Schwarznegger into office precisely on this premise. I've grown up since, fortunately. I'm sad that no one called me on it when I explained my reasoning to people back then.

I wouldn't bother mentioning it if I didn't see people claiming otherwise.[1] :)

1. Not necessarily in this thread, but in general. (I live in KY.)

Hypocrisy? I'm not so sure.

It is really difficult to get a single person to change their mind about something. Even more difficult to get large groups to change their collective opinion.

Theoretical concerns about how a program might be abused are much less convincing to people than actual abuses. It isn't surprising to me that people who discounted the possiblity of abuse in the past might now think differently about it (politicians and public citizens alike) when presented with actual overreach or even abuse.

I don't think that is an example of hypocrisy though.

Sorry, but you have no idea what you're talking about. At all.

Rand Paul was one of the very few, along with Ron Wyden and Udall, to try and stop the FISA Amendments Act from being renewed last year. They voted against them (and for FISA renewal) 92-7.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIyLlXBcbjo

So HE HASN'T CHANGED HIS MIND ABOUT ANYTHING. This is how he was thinking all along. It's the others that supported the spying.

> The American people have basically known about this since about 2006

2006?

Try 1997

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnivore_(software) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON_system

... and anybody with any sense could guess they've been doing this for far longer. The NSA doesn't go around shouting it from the rooftops, but they've never tried particularly hard to hide that they're doing this sort of thing.

Note the copyright date on this file from the Emacs distribution:

http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/emacs.git/tree/lisp/play/sp...

The most surprising thing about the current episode is simply that everybody's acting so shocked. Seriously people?

Senators are not one person, which I suppose is why you're getting confused as to the contradiction. There are those like Obama who were for things like this, and those like Rand Paul who are against.

Rand Paul may have its faults. Many people like libertarianism but they don't like the pro-religion/prolife and pro-rich aspects that come with it. That's why Bill Maher has distanced himself recently from the libertarian appelation. However to say that it's not sincere coming from Rand Paul is not fair at all. If you know a little bit about who he is, who his father is, you couldn't say that... Of course Rand Paul is building a political portfolio for 2016. The filibuster, the TSA, the balanced budgets and now this, it's all going into it. But all these political actions are in line with who he is and what he represents. And still, after all that there's a very big chance he'll lose to a generic republican like Rubio or Ryan in the primaries.

Your speculation about the GOP primaries is mis-informed. In 2010, Rand was an insurgent "tea party" republican, as was Rubio -- both men were officially opposed by the party in their primaries and defeated the "generic" GOP candidate. In both the GOP and Democrat parties, generic candidates often struggle in primaries if there is a non-crazy candidate who can appeal to the base. Rand has a safe path back to the GOP nomination -- his biggest risk is doing too much "national" work and losing to an establishment Democrat in battleground Kentucky.

My reading of it is he was referring to the 2016 Presidential primary contest for the Republican Party, not to the Republican primary for the Senate race in Kentucky.

Pro-religion, pro-life and pro-rich? This is the kind of misinformation that gives it a bad name. Libertarianism is all about personal choice and "liberty" hence the name. The point is not to tell you whether or not you should be pro-life or pro-religion but to let you decide for yourself.

Libertarianism in general isn't particularly pro-religion or anti-abortion. (except in that it supports general 1A, but a lot of atheists are libertarians). I think the Paul family's anti-abortion stance is their own (and, it was always kind of understandable for Ron Paul, as an Ob/Gyn, to have a strong opinion one way or the other on the issue)

Whoa horsey. Slow down a bit. I'm as pissed as you are, but you're spreading too wide of a net.

Yes, Congress has oversight authority over all of this, but in practice what they've done is assign huge powers to agencies and then just hold PR committee meetings every now and then when they think they can get votes.

As far as I know, the only legislators fully briefed on all of this were the majority/minority leaders. Perhaps the chairmen of the intelligence committees. Perhaps not. Definitely not the entire committee, and definitely not every senator who can appear in front of a microphone.

The real problem here is that Congress has abdicated its power over to agencies ran by the president. This is true in many areas. If things screw up, they can have hearings and look like heroes. If things go well, they can either ignore them or make hay. In either case, nobody really cares what the agencies are doing. It's impossible. There simply too much detail for the legislature to manage. So the rule is: never do anything that will make you appear on TV. This is what the NSA violated.

I'd just be careful you don't throw the baby out with the bath water. Congress has the power, and could use it, to straighten this entire thing out. It's not just all PR stunts. Or how about putting it this way: yes, it's PR stunts, but with enough attention on these stunts, maybe the rest of them will grow the balls necessary to actually do their jobs.

This is a good sign. I hope we see many more "PR stunts" like it.

I don't know if the real problem is that Congress has abdicated its power. I think the real, real problem is that many of the sensible people in congress realize they have many colleagues who are either excessively partisan or incompetent. They realize that delegation to within the agencies or executive branch means the fewer of such folks with access to information that they might feel tempted to leak for personal or political gain or just because of raw stupidity.

If what you say is true...

These Congresspeople should be removed from office. They are obviously not doing their jobs. That's the one thing McCain said this morning that was correct. Congresspeople were informed... and are now feigning righteous indignation. He pointed out that there was only one vote against the Patriot Act... and that member is no longer in office.

Russ Feingold of Wisconsin was the lone voice for liberty in 2001 [1]. There were 10 votes against its renewal in 2006. There were 66 Nays in the House in 2001, including—famously—Dr. Paul.

[1] http://educate-yourself.org/cn/patriotact20012006senatevote....

> It looks like a dog and pony show set up to make it look like someone gives a shit while they all keep getting briefed and voting for this stuff behind closed doors.

And also, this is yet another instance of where a politician has decided that only Americans have rights. At least mention a framework (reciprocity, normalized relations, something) under which surveillance of non-Americans would be allowed instead of making it a binary "You're either one of us or one of them!"

so what's the hypocrisy again?

What do you find preferable?

In scenario A, a group of senators learn of a widespread domestic surveillance program. They all think it's a good idea, or at least a good enough idea that there's no reason to protest, gum up the works, or raise an alarm. When the program is accidentally disclosed to the public, they all greet widespread popular outrage with the message "we've considered this, and we want to keep it going".

In scenario B, a group of senators learn of a widespread domestic surveillance program. They all think it's a good idea, or at least a good enough idea that there's no reason to protest, gum up the works, or raise an alarm. When the program is accidentally disclosed to the public, they all respond to widespread popular outrage by sounding even more outraged than the public. There is much senatorial roaring and gnashing of teeth. Investigations are opened. All this despite the fact that the senators don't really see what the big deal is.

The highest function of an American politician is to reflect the views of the public. When the facts change, their minds must not change; that would betray the base. But when public sentiment changes (if, for example, the public were to come into possession of information that was new to it), their minds change with it.

Agreed, Rand Paul has had access to this information for years. He's just playing on people's emotions to get more support now that it's all public.

"Years".. as in just over two of them?