The bouncing Rand Paul

Thursday, Sen. Rand Paul said he was "quite happy with the answer." He was "disappointed it took a month and a half and a root canal to get it," nonetheless he "did get the answer" from the Obama administration. "And that’s what I’ve been asking all along."

I confess my astonishment at the time. Just minutes earlier I had written, "Can you think of anything at all that would have entirely satisfied Sen. Paul?" I couldn't. Thus when Sen. Paul announced he was "happy"--loosely, "satisfied"--I was pleasingly disappointed in my having doubted that Paul possessed at least some honor as a man, a politician, a rising demagogue. So I updated what I had written: "Sen. Paul is, after all, satisfied?" Yes, that was a trifle snarky. But I was in shock.

I shouldn't have been, nor should I have ever doubted Paul's lack of honor. For today, in the Washington Post, the senator writes that "The president still needs to definitively say that the United States will not kill American noncombatants." The senator is no longer "quite happy" with the administration's definitive "no," it will not kill American noncombatants; the senator now regrets that "the administration took too long, and parsed too many words and phrases, to instill confidence in its willingness or ability to protect our liberty."

This is precisely the shell game I expected of this contemptible demagogue, whom Eric Holder, to be sure, treated with commensurate contempt in what law professor Ryan Goodman describes this morning as that "somewhat odd," "seemingly simple but maddeningly vague letter."

The simple "no" letter, that is, which is as seemingly simple but maddeningly vague as the Mosaic proscription, "Thou shalt not kill." In being non-lawyerly, the Lord--don't you think?--was being too clever by half: just four simple words. Whereas Rand Paul would pin the Creator's messenger to the Senate wall, peppering him with demands for definitive, codifying language on what just what in hell "kill" means.

But God Himself could never satisfy Paul. Because Paul's mission is in fact not to be blinded by absolute clarity, which Paul happily knows is unachievable anyway. His mission is far more secular than that. (Although just as unachievable).

Comments

[AnneJ]

All he did the other night was 13 hours of shameless self-promotion. It was just like when he needed to show what a big tough man he was by berating Hillary Clinton in front of cameras. He's a fake libertarian and only pulled his theatrical display for the purpose of raising his personal profile and campaign cash. It was all about him and his personal advancement and any concern for civil liberties was purely coincidental.

[Janicket]

In other words, AnneJ, a typical TP Republican.