Rep. Paul's office stated that his position is that Certain Religions aren't "Real" religions. What is a real religion, Mr. Paul? What you have been practicing? He says on the one hand that only certain Christian denominations are valid. On the other hand he blatantly follows a philosophy similar to Satanism in formulating representation of his constituents. Read the following and remember: "By their Works may they be known." This is a summary of information collected from several sources about Rep. Rand Paul.

(Remember it is best to investigate on your own when looking at allegations about anyone. Don't believe us, think for yourself and investigate for yourself! And remember, the First Amendment Coalition and Religious Freedom Coalition of the South East do not represent any political party nor do we recommend any political candidate, nor are we involving ourselves in the political process.)

Excerpt from an article on crooksandliars.com by David July 03, 2011

Rand Paul Promises to Filibuster Everything Over The Debt Ceiling

A group of tea party Senators plans to filibuster over raising the debt ceiling, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) announced in an interview that aired on C-SPAN Sunday.

"I was part of a group this week that said, 'No more,'" Paul explained. "We're tired of talking about extraneous issues. We've had not one minute of debate about the debt ceiling in any committee. We haven't had a budget in two years. We haven't had an appropriations bill in two years."

"So I'm part of the freshman group in the Senate that's saying, 'no more.' We're not going to let them go to any issue if we have a say in it. We will filibuster until we talk about the debt ceiling, until we talk about proposals, and many of us in the conservative wing are going to present our own proposal next week. And that is to raise the debt ceiling. We will actually vote in favor of raising the debt ceiling next week if we can but it will be contingent upon passing a balanced budget amendment."

Tags: appropriations, Balanced Budget, Balanced Budget Amendment, C-Span, rand paul, senators

Rand Paul: America's Hungry Seniors Should Turn to Charity

Excerpt from an article by Joan McCarter for the Daily Kos ( dailykos.com )

It's a seriously fucked up new world in Washington, DC.

A Senate subcommittee on Primary Health and Aging, chaired by Sen. Bernie Sanders, held a hearing Tuesday on the �human toll and budget consequences� of senior hunger. Panelists shared tales of woe from older Americans unable to get enough food, and urged increased funding for nutrition programs under the Older Americans Act of 1965.
This might have been non-controversial a few years ago, but not with the Tea Party in town. The hearing produced a fierce debate between Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist, and Sen. Rand Paul, the prototypical Tea Partier, about whether the government should even perform simple tasks like feeding hungry senior citizens....

Mary Jane Koren, a geriatrician and vice-president of the Commonwealth Fund, noted that seniors often suffer health problems and are put in nursing homes after falling down. Poor nutrition leads to decreased muscle strength, meaning a higher chance of falling�and weaker seniors are more likely to be gravely injured in such a fall. Koren noted that by 2020, the annual cost of medical care for seniors who fall is expected to reach $54.9 billion�many magnitudes more than the approximately $2 billion per year the federal government spends on nutrition assistance for senior citizens.

Sen. Paul, however, explicitly rejected this logic. �It�s curious that only in Washington can you spend $2 billion and claim that you�re saving money,� he said. �The idea or notion that spending money in Washington somehow is saving money really flies past most of the taxpayers.� Instead, Paul touted the �nobility of private charity� as opposed to government-funded �transfer programs.� He suggested privatizing Meals on Wheels and other government assistance for hungry seniors.

Sanders had none of this. �Senator Paul has suggested that only in Washington can people believe that spending money actually saves money. And I think that�s the kind of philosophy that results in us spending about twice as much per person on health care as any other country on earth,� Sanders said. �We have millions of millions of Americans who can�t get to a doctor on time. Some of them die, some of them become very, very ill and end up in the emergency room or end up in the hospital at great cost.

�Maybe it�s the same reason why we have more people in jail than any other country on earth including China, tied to the fact that we have the highest poverty rate among children among many other major countries on earth,� Sanders continued. �I happen to believe that intelligently investing in the needs of our people does in fact save substantial sums of money.�

In providing this explanation of how social investment works, and the consequences of not making it, Sen. Sanders is making the mistake of thinking that Sen. Paul a) has the capacity to understand what his talking about, and b) gives a shit that there are people dying because they don't have health care, or have to chose between it and starving. It highlights the great divide between the Republican party of 2011 and the rest of us, a distinction elected Democrats need to be calling out loudly and repeatedly. But in the new austerity-driven policy world, good luck with that.

Libertarian Rand Paul Is Suddenly Very Concerned About The Right To Free Assembly

Excerpt from an article on Rand Paul and Right to Assemble guaranteed by the constitution at Think Progress.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) is usually described as a doctrinaire libertarian, and in many of his policy complaints, this is reliably borne out. For example, Paul is of the opinion that the Americans With Disabilities Act is an egregious infringement on liberty, when the "common sense solution" is obviously to herd wheelchair-bound workers to the first floor of every office building.

That's what Paul believes and he usually sticks to it. So I'm as surprised as the next guy to learn that Paul now believes that certain people should be jailed for merely exercising their right to assemble under the Constitution of the United States.

According to Alex Seitz-Wald, Paul's sudden shift on civil liberties all went down on Sean Hannity's radio show last Friday:

PAUL: I'm not for profiling people on the color of their skin, or on their religion, but I would take into account where they've been traveling and perhaps, you might have to indirectly take into account whether or not they've been going to radical political speeches by religious leaders. It wouldn't be that they are Islamic. But if someone is attending speeches from someone who is promoting the violent overthrow of our government, that's really an offense that we should be going after -- they should be deported or put in prison.

Hey, now! Suddenly we're deporting and jailing people for attending speeches? Um ...

Paul's suggestion that people be imprisoned or deported for merely attending a political speech would be a fairly egregious violation on the First Amendment, not to mention due process. What if someone attended a radical speech as a curious bystander? Should they too be thrown in prison? And who defines what is considered so "radical" that it is worth imprisonment?

These are good questions. I'd hate to see Rand Paul get hoisted with his own petard. (Dearie me! Am I even still allowed to talk about petards in public?)

Well, what do the courts say about the matter? Here's Glenn Greenwald:

Indeed, the First Amendment not only protects the mere "attending" of a speech "promoting the violent overthrow of our government," but also the giving of such a speech. The government is absolutely barred by the Free Speech clause from punishing people even for advocating violence. That has been true since the Supreme Court's unanimous 1967 decision in Brandenburg v. Ohio, which overturned the criminal conviction of a Ku Klux Klan leader who had threatened violence against political officials in a speech.

See, that's what I thought. Naturally, I have no doubt that somewhere out there someone is assembled in a gathering of free citizens, listening to someone discuss the violent overthrow of the government. I'm not unconcerned about that, but the standard libertarian line I grew up with was, "Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."

At any rate, there is already a criminal statute that penalizes the agreement of a group to commit a criminal act -- it's called "conspiracy." It mainly focuses on persons who are actively and overtly participating in plans to commit a crime. I'm guessing that one good way to evaluate whether or not a "radical group" is going to escalate from merely talking about overthrowing the government to actually pursuing the furtherance of such a plan is to let people freely attend that group's speeches without fear that they'll be clapped in irons.

Rand Paul WalkBack: I Would Have Voted for the Civil Rights Act -- Still Says He Objects to the ADA

by Heather on May 21, 2010

As Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo noted:

They used to say that folks evolved once they got on the Supreme Court. But I'm not sure we've ever seen the kind of evolution Rand Paul's undergone over less than 24 hours.

Let me try to summarize.

1) I don't support the Civil Rights Act but I personally abhor discrimination.

2) I would not support any effort to repeal the Civil Rights Act.

3) I believe in the Civil Rights Act and the constitutional power to enforce it.

4) If I would have been in the Senate at the time I would have voted for the Civil Rights Act.

Any guesses on number 5?

Probably his remarks here to Blitzer that he still isn't so sure about how he would have voted on the Americans With Disabilities Act. And as Jed pointed out over at KOS, apparently Paul doesn't even know what's in the law he objects to:

Rand Paul, explaining to Wolf Blitzer why he objects to the Americans with Disabilities Act:

Let's say you have a local office and you have a two story office and one of your workers is handicapped. Should you not be allowed maybe to offer them an office on the first floor, or should you be forced to put in a hundred thousand dollar elevator?

Sounds reasonable, right? In fact, it's so reasonable that the ADA contains an exception for that very situation.

Elevators are not required in:

(a) private facilities that are less than three stories or that have less than 3000 square feet per story unless the building is a shopping center, a shopping mall, or the professional office of a health care provider, or another type of facility as determined by the Attorney General; or

(b) public facilities that are less than three stories and that are not open to the general public if the story above or below the accessible ground floor houses no more than five persons and is less than 500 square feet. Examples may include, but are not limited to, drawbridge towers and boat traffic towers, lock and dam control stations, and train dispatching towers.

So Rand Paul opposes a law because he believes it imposes a mandate that it does not in fact impose. What an idiot.

No argument there. Rand Paul looked like he was sucking on a lemon during this interview, so I assume he wasn't too happy to be there. He'd better get used to it since this campaign is just getting started.

And as Dave Weigel pointed out, he doesn't like the Fair Housing Act so much either: Rand Paul in '02: I may not like it, but 'a free society' will allow 'hate-filled groups to exclude people based on the color of their skin':

Here's another wrinkle in the controversy over U.S. Senate candidate Rand Paul's arguments, made Wednesday to NPR and Rachel Maddow, over whether the Civil Rights Act was necessary to prevent discrimination.

In a May 30, 2002, letter to the Bowling Green Daily News, Paul's hometown newspaper, he criticized the paper for endorsing the Fair Housing Act, and explained that "a free society will abide unofficial, private discrimination, even when that means allowing hate-filled groups to exclude people based on the color of their skin."

Nice work Kentucky Republicans.

Transcript via CNN below the fold.

BLITZER: Two days after winning the Republican Senate primary in Kentucky, the darling of the tea party movement, Rand Paul, is coming under some fire. Critics are seizing on remarks he made about the civil rights act of 1964, and his Democratic opponent is accusing Rand Paul of promoting what he calls a narrow and rigid ideology with dangerous consequences. Joining us now is the Republican Senate candidate from Kentucky, Rand Paul. Dr. Paul, thanks very much for coming in.

RAND PAUL, (R) KENTUCKY SENATE CANDIDATE: Good to be with you, Wolf.

BLITZER: I want to give you a chance to explain because there's a lot of confusion right now about precisely where you stand. I'll ask you a simple question. If you had been a member of the Senate or the house back in 1964, would you have voted yea or nay for the civil rights act?

PAUL: Yes, I would have voted yes.

BLITZER: So, why is there all this confusion emerging right now? Give me your analysis, because you had to issue a statement today. There've been interviews on NPR yesterday and MSNBC. Tell us what's going on.

PAUL: Well, first of all, Wolf, I thought I was supposed to get a honeymoon. When does my honeymoon start, you know, after my victory?

BLITZER: No such thing in politics, Dr. Paul.

PAUL: No such thing, I think you're right. I think what troubles me is that the news cycle's gotten out of control. I mean, for several hours on a major news network yesterday, they reported repeatedly that I was for repealing the civil rights act. That is not only not true, never been my position, but is an out and out lie. They repeated it all day long. It started with my Democrat opponent asserting this but has never been my position.

BLITZER: You support that -- because the argument was -- the argument was made that you support the civil rights act in terms of federal -- in terms of government responsibilities. There should be no racism or segregation, but if there's a private club or a restaurant where they don't want to serve African-Americans as abhorrent as that is, you think that they have -- you suggested, correct me if I'm wrong, they would have a right to do that?

PAUL: What I did suggest was that it was a stain on the history of the south and our country that you know we desegregated in 1840 in Boston. William Lloyd Garrison was up there with Frederick Douglas being thrown off trains and going through what happened in 1840 in Boston. So, I think it is a stain on our history and something that I am sad for and something that if I had been alive at the time, I would hope that I would have been there marching with Martin Luther King.

One of our biggest county coordinators was there with Martin Luther King, attended the rallies in D.C., and considers himself to be a civil rights activist, and he takes it as a personal insult that people will say that our movement doesn't believe in civil rights.

BLITZER: But I just want to be precise on this, Dr. Paul. I want to be precise, did Woolworth Department Store have a right at their lunch counters to segregate blacks and whites?

PAUL: I think that there was an overriding problem in the south, so big that it did require federal intervention in the 1960s, and it stemmed from things that I said, you know, have been going on really 120 years too long, and the southern states weren't correcting it, and I think there was a need for federal intervention.

BLITZER: All right. So, you clarified you would have voted yea, you would have voted yes, in favor of the 1964 civil rights act.

PAUL: Yes.

BLITZER: Would you also have voted for the Americans with disabilities act?

PAUL: Well, I have some questions about it. I mean, the one question that comes to mind -- to my thinking is, let's say you have a local office and you have a two-story office, and one of your workers is handicapped. Should you not be allowed maybe to offer them an office on the first floor or should you be forced to put in a $100,000 elevator? I think that sounds like common sense that you should be allowed maybe to give them a first floor office. I think, sometimes, when we have a federal solution, we make it one size fits all and that we recognize the problem which I do all of someone who's handicapped, but then, we don't take any consideration at all the business owner or the property owner. So, I think it's a balancing act and I'd have to look at that legislation to see how they balanced it, but my understanding is that small business owners were often forced to put in elevators, and I think you ought to at least be given a choice can you provide an opportunity without maybe having to pay for an elevator?

BLITZER: So, the answer is you don't know for sure if you would have voted yes or no on that Americans for disabilities act?

PAUL: Yes. I mean, I'd have to look at it and see. I think you do have -- it's a balancing act. And I am in favor of trying to have the workplace open. My office is open to the handicapped. We try very hard, but, you know, it's been open to the handicapped for decades, so, you know, it doesn't always take government for people to do the right thing. Sometimes, government has to step in extraordinary circumstances, but I think a lot of times that the -- the private world can step up and do the right things or we can find local solutions over federal solutions, so it's not always whether you oppose something.

It's about where the solution should arrive, whether it arrives at the federal government or the local government. I do think, though, that there is a big civil rights issue out there. I think the Democrats avoid it, and that's school choice. I think the biggest thing holding down our inner city communities is a lack of good education, and I say give them a choice. Let them choose to go to a school anywhere in the city or outside the city, and so I think school choice is the civil rights issue of our era, and many people are saying that.

BLITZER: I want you to have a chance to differentiate, if you want to differentiate, with your dad. I've interviewed Congressman Ron Paul on many occasions, and we've gone through all of these issues. He's a principled libertarian, as you well know. First of all, are you as principled a libertarian from your perspective as your dad?

PAUL: Some will say not. I call myself a constitutional conservative, which means that I believe that the constitution does restrict and restrain the federal government, and we should be doing a lot less than what we're doing, and if we did so, I think we would balance the budget, and we would have more local and state control.

BLITZER: All right.

PAUL: So, we'll agree on a lot of issues, and we'll disagree on some, and there may be some nuance. But I would say, you know, he will probably still be the number one libertarian in the country. I'm probably not going to supplant him there.

BLITZER: You're not going to be able to compete because there are four votes, and I've discussed this with him, himself, in which the vote was 425-1, 421-1, 424-1, for example, asking Arab states to acknowledge genocide in Darfur, asking Vietnam to release a political prisoner, condemning the Zimbabwe government, awarding a gold medal to Rosa Parks, your dad was the only member on the Democratic and the Republican side to vote against that because he's a principled libertarian. He doesn't want the U.S. government involved in any of these issues. Are you the same as him?

PAUL: Probably not. And the thing is, is that he is incredibly principled, and I admire him for the stands he's taken. Interestingly, some of those things, it sounds like how could anybody be against that? The reason he votes against it a lot of times is not that he disagrees with the position. Often, he'll agree with the position of the resolution, but just think that the government really shouldn't be making a statement on some of these things.

I think it's yet to be seen how I'll vote on resolutions, non- binding resolutions, but I'm probably not going to be the great path breaker that he is. But I think he stands on principle, and I think he's well respected because he doesn't compromise his principles.

BLITZER: We're going to continue this conversation. I'm hoping on many occasions, Dr. Paul. Thanks very much for coming in. Glad you had a chance --

PAUL: Thank you.

BLITZER: To explain your positions precisely. These are, as you well know, as a novice politician, among the most sensitive issues out there.

PAUL: Thank you, Wolf.

BLITZER: Dr. Rand Paul is the Republican senatorial candidate from Kentucky.

Tags: Civil Rights, disabilities, discrimination, Kentucky, rand paul, Senate, The Situation Room, Wolf Blitzer

Rand Paul's Godless Goddess of Greed: Ayn Rand

Excerpts from an article by Brent Budowsky posted on motherjones.com on 05/10/11

I will give Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) the respect of treating him as the serious presidential candidate he is. One of the commenters on my previous Ron Paul Pundit Blog responded to me suggesting that sometimes I agree with Dr. Paul, and often I don't, by fairly asking me on what matters I disagree with him. I gave a partial answer then, a longer answer here, and welcome a respectful discussion.

Dr. Paul has said he is a great admirer of Ayn Rand. So has Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), whose attempt to destroy Medicare might cost Republicans 30 House seats. So has former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, whose monetary policies, not unrelated to his admiration for Ayn Rand, did as much as anyone to cause the financial crash.

Ayn Rand, like Karl Marx, was a strong disbeliever in the values of organized religion, and Jesus Christ in particular. Ayn Rand, a fierce and aggressive critic of President Kennedy, was a strong disbeliever in the concept of patriotism that involves sacrifice for others.

At some point there will be a fierce debate on the right between the proud atheism of Ayn Rand and the proud faith of the religious right, and all of the policy differences these views create.

Ayn Rand believed in a Darwinian view of the world, in a supremely selfish notion of citizenship in which we are not our brother's keeper, in which her greatest good involves the most selfish ends.

To be fair, she also attacked parasites in business. It would be interesting to know what she would think about Wall Street bonuses to bailed-out bankers. I suspect she would not have liked them, but I also know that many of her devotees today have no objection to them. Why have the Tea Party leaders been so (hypocritically) silent about the Wall Street bonuses for bailed-out firms?

Where I disagree with Dr. Paul is this: If money-center banks all raise credit card interest rates to levels once considered usury, this is not capitalism, it is not libertarianism, it is greed. I would challenge this practice. Dr. Paul, Rep. Ryan and Chairman Greenspan would not.

I believe the great political divide today is not left versus right, but those who believe we are in this together versus those who believe in the selfish grabbing of as much as they can for themselves. America is not a nation of the superior versus the inferior; America is not a nation of elites who are elite because they are superior to the rest of us (though by Ayn Rand's standards I qualify as one of the superior elites, a view I totally reject).

I agree with Dr. Paul that Fed secrecy is very wrong. I disagree with Dr. Paul when he opposes Fed action to stimulate the economy. The problem with the Fed is that the Fed has pursued gigantic bailout policies that were entirely top-down, bailing out bankers at the top and not helping small businesses, homeowners and American workers.

If a homeowner was cheated on a mortgage, that homeowner is not inferior. The mortgage issuer who cheated him or her is not superior, but is a crook. The role of government is to protect the honest from the crooks. To say otherwise is not libertarian, it is supporting the crooks.

The core of Ayn Rand's view, incorporated into many of the policies of Dr. Paul and certain (but not all) Tea Party believers, is that the poor are poor because they are inferior, that workers are jobless because they are inferior (how many times have Ayn Rand believers opposed jobless benefits, falsely believing the jobless would rather have the benefits than the jobs?).

It is no coincidence that Ayn Rand disciple Alan Greenspan pursued monetary policies that heaped huge monies to the top of the Wall Street pyramid without any meaningful limits or regulation of abuses by those who received those monies. It is no coincidence that Rep. Ryan wants to turn Medicare into a private insurance company, as though private insurers (his superior player) will best look out for the healthcare needs of the elderly.

I can respect and in many ways admire Dr. Paul, and have always tried to treat him fairly in my columns, but where is his concern for the poor? Where is his protection of consumers from abuse? Where is Dr. Paul's concern for American workers whose jobs are being exported to low-wage nations?

In Ayn Rand's view, in Dr. Paul's view, the magic of a marketplace that in many regards is mythical, will let the superior prosper and let those they consider inferior suffer, even if their suffering is from corruption of others.

I agree with President Kennedy, who asked what we could do for our country, and disagree with Ayn Rand, who asks what we can do only for ourselves and compared John F. Kennedy's call to patriotism to, in her words, "fascism.�

Personally I stand with the Sermon on the Mount, the Golden Rule and John F. Kennedy's inaugural address and deplore the politics of greed and self-interest and me-ism that Ayn Rand, and her disciples, represent.