Source: Rand Paul’s 13 Hour Filibuster – The Talking Kind – Against John Brennan – ABC News.

“I rise today to begin to filibuster John Brennan’s nomination for the CIA, Paul said at about 11:47 a.m. ET. “I will speak until I can no longer speak. I will speak as long as it takes, until the alarm is sounded from coast to coast that our Constitution is important, that your rights to trial by jury are precious, that no American should be killed by a drone on American soil without first being charged with a crime, without first being found to be guilty by a court, that Americans could be killed in a cafe in San Francisco or in a restaurant in Houston or at their home in Bowling Green, Ky., is an abomination. It is something that should not and cannot be tolerated in our country.”

Paul said he doesn’t necessarily think President Obama will abuse the power. But no president, said Paul, should have the power to kill Americans in the U.S. without a trial by jury.

Now that all the punsters have had their say I want to comment a little on Rand Paul’s recent old-time filibuster. Rand Paul’s views of government are a little too radical for me but sometimes he is the only one to come to defend some of our most basic rights. And this is one of those times. Our government was very wisely set up by the founding fathers with a pretty strict system of checks-and-balances.  No one person or one organization is supposed to have enough power onto themselves to do grievous harm to our country. Unauthorized and unchecked authority to kill others without due process is one of those things that does not pass muster of constitutional intent. Thank you Mr. Rand for stand up for thirteen hours to take that stand.

Probably the only major hit on this filibuster came to Mr. Rand’s bladder but the idea of actually doing it was noble. I don’t know how we let the Republicans filibuster so much in what they call a “silent filibuster”.  They have used the filibuster to change making laws require more than a simple majority as has been the case throughout our history. The filibuster was intended to be used for rare and exceptional circumstances. They have bastardized this very basic constitutional tool.

Mr Reid had an opportunity to change the filibuster but nobly took the word of the gOp that they would restrict from using it as they had. He was naive in that regard probably naively so :)  If we are going to continue to have filibusters I hope they are in the Rand Paul mode….