With his nearly 13-hour filibuster, fellow Kentuckian Rand Paul is my new hero. From the best article I've seen about it, at Reason magazine's Hit & Run site:
The filibuster succeeded precisely because it wasn't a cheap partisan ploy but because the substance under discussion - why won't the president of the United States, his attorney general, and his nominee to head the CIA explain their views on limits to their power? - transcends anything so banal or ephemeral as party affiliation or ideological score-settling.
The chills started early in the filibuster as Paul said things along the lines of, "If you're gonna kill people in America [as terrorists], you need rules and we need to know your rules," and "To be bombed in your sleep - there's nothing American, nothing constitutional, about that" (these quotes are paraphrases). Those are not the words of a career politician trying to gain an advantage during the next round of horse-trading over a pork-barrel project. They are the words of a patriot who puts his country first and they inspire accordingly.
Exhilarating. What made the filibuster more than a "partisan stunt" was that neither Paul nor any of the other speakers excused George W. Bush, whose power grab on behalf of national security is being continued (and enhanced) by President Obama.
