QOTD: Addie Stan
by digby
[I]f it’s protection from NSA snooping you want, note that there is another presidential candidate who is every bit as opposed the spy agency’s collection of your phone activity as is the neo-Confederate from the Bluegrass State, but who also supports the rights of women and people who aren’t white. Senator Bernie Sanders, the Vermont socialist running for the Democratic presidential nomination, is pretty good at the speechifying himself, but when it comes to carrying out his responsibilities in the World’s Greatest Deliberative body, he apparently doesn’t see the need to throw water balloons off an overpass to show the world that he can cause a pile-up.
I guess he must not be as cute or something …
Paul is Paul and he does his thing. I’m ok with his grandstanding not because I believe it was particularly effective but because it’s better than nothing. But the truth is that it was the Democrats holding fast, even the usual suspects, against McConnell’s attempts to push the Patriot Act to expiration and force a vote to either extend it or add a bunch of horrible amendments to the USA Freedom Act. His gambit didn’t work and the mild reforms in the USA Freedom Act were passed. Paul’s actions were pretty irrelevant to that outcome. Unlike some commentators, I don’t think Republicans as a whole give a flying flack about NSA surveillance and it won’t help him at all in the presidential race. When they say they are anti-government, they are anti government run by Democrats for the benefit of anyone who doesn’t look like them. They are very much pro-government spying on “bad people” (of color) and killing foreigners.
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