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Conservative radio host Laura Ingraham -- who once accused opponents of the Iraq invasion of trying to "subvert America" -- is now blasting the The Wall Street Journal for beating the "war drums" because the editorial board expressed support for President Barack Obama's use of drones.

Fox News host Chris Wallace on Sunday asked Ingraham what she thought of the split within the Republican Party after Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) criticized Sen. Rand Paul's (R-KY) filibuster of CIA Director John Brennan over speculation that President Barack Obama might target citizens inside U.S. borders with drone strikes.

"John McCain, Lindsey Graham and The Wall Street Journal editorial board, extremely dismissive of Rand Paul," Ingraham pointed out. "Wall Street Journal said, 'Calm down;' said, 'You don't have to do more than fire up impressionable libertarians in their college dorms.'"

"I thought to myself, when is the last time a Republican managed to capture the imagination of young people, some people on the left, Mitch McConnell, John Thune, John Cornyn, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio?" she added. "There was a wide range of Republicans and people on the left who said, 'You know something? I think the attorney general should be able to answer a simple question [about the use of drones] with an unequivocal yes or no.' He couldn't do that, and Rand Paul served an enormously important function during that filibuster. He wasn't waving his hands and ranting and raving, contrary to what the Journal condescendingly said."

Liberal contributor Juan Williams argued that the targeted killing policy needed to have transparency and judicial review, but Paul was "grand standing" with his filibuster.

"But the fact is that no U.S. citizen has ever been targeted or killed by a drone on U.S. soil," Williams explained. "And secondly, the Constitution gives the president authority to go after a U.S. citizen if that U.S. citizen is somehow involved in colluding with an enemy of the United States."

"I just want to say that I love the fact that we have the hawk, Juan Williams, and the dove, Laura Ingraham," Wallace snarked.

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Look out. Grandpa McGrumpy got a little testy and decided to pull out old St. Ronnie's corpse after Fox's Shepard Smith dared to call him "an interventionist" and bring up McCain's "joke" about bombing Iran during a discussion about Rand Paul's filibuster this week.

McCain Says He, Not Rand Paul, Represents ‘Party Of Ronald Reagan':

At a time when there appears to be a burgeoning rift in Republican ranks over the government's use of drones, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) on Friday argued that he, not Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), represents former President Ronald Reagan's true legacy in the party.

In a tense interview on Fox News, anchor Shepard Smith brought up the emerging schism between hawks such as McCain and non-interventionists like Paul.McCain and his longtime ally Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) each blasted Paul earlier this week for the Kentucky libertarian's epic 13-hour filibuster over the nomination of John Brennan to lead the CIA.

Smith brought up McCain's ardent support for military intervention in the past, as well as an infamous Beach Boys parody once sung by the Arizona Republican that seemed to express support for bombing Iran. The latter reference drew McCain's ire.

"You really believe that?" McCain asked Smith incredulously.

"Sir, all I'm asking is is it your sense that Rand Paul may be bringing together people in the basement who align maybe in some cases more closely with the left than with the right," Smith said.

McCain bristled at Smith's reference to his "joke" about a strike against Iran and then argued that his vision of establishing "peace through strength" upholds Reagan's legacy more than Paul's isolationism. The two-time presidential candidate also quibbled with the notion that he's an "interventionist."

"I'm of the party of Ronald Reagan and there's been a debate in our party for years and years about whether we should withdraw to fortress America or not. But to say we're interventionists is a mislabeling and absolutely false," McCain said. "We are for a strong America and we believe that's the best way to prevent war rather than a weakened military, which many of my colleagues now support who are the isolationists, which goes all the way back to post-World War I."

McCain is apparently hoping the country's collective amnesia prevents them from even remembering as far back as the Bush administration.

He didn't look a whole lot happier than he was earlier the previous day when he shared an elevator ride with Paul.

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The charisma-hungry Republicans are fanboys at heart, desperate for new heroes. So it's not surprising that the chairman of the Republican Party on Thursday said that Sen. Rand Paul's (R-KY) filibuster of CIA Director John Brennan was "completely awesome."

Like, totally.

During a stop on his listening tour in Iowa, Priebus was asked if Paul's filibuster over President Barack Obama's use of drones had energized the party.

"Listen, I think it was completely awesome," the RNC chairman said. "I was excited about it myself. I couldn't go to bed. I'm still excited about it."

(Hey Reince, we'd really rather not hear you use the words "bed" and "excited" in the same sentence, mmkay? Some things are private.)

"You know what I'm excited about?" Priebus continued. "I think our party needs some unity sometimes and it's not easy not having the White House and sometimes you've got scrap and claw for issues that can unify a party. Now, that's not totally unity, but this was great issue in standing up against the president, asking some simple and important questions. And I was happy to see so many other Republican senators support Sen. Paul."

(No, it's not easy having all that money, ALEC, the Heritage Foundation, Fox News, Politico, The Daily Caller, the American Enterprise Institute, the National Rifle Association... why, the Republican party is just like a little lamb, lost in the woods.)

According to the Des Moines Register, conservative activists in Iowa told Priebus that they wanted to see more integration between former Rep. Ron Paul's "liberty movement" and the Republican Party.

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Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell drew the ire of The Daily Show's Jon Stewart this Thursday evening after he decided to briefly join Sen. Rand Paul's thirteen hour filibuster of John Brennan's nomination to head the CIA. As Stewart rightfully pointed out, any of these members of Congress who sat silent during the Bush years pretty well forfeited their right to feign concern over the civil liberties of Americans now.

STEWART: Those other senators are recent additions to the Senate, so I don't mind them jumping into Paul's filibuster, but you don't get to jump in on the concern the executive branch might be trampling the Constitution train. If I remember correctly during the Bush torture, suspended habeas corpus, see if you can get the Attorney General to sign off wireless wiretapping while he's in a coma years, I believe your response to that was... yeah.

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Current TV's John Fugelsang and progressive talk show host Thom Hartmann discussed Rand Paul and his 13-hour-long filibuster this week, demanding an answer on whether the Obama administration believes that they can authorize drone strikes against Americans on U.S. soil. As Hartmann rightfully noted, though, that filibuster probably had a whole lot more to do with Paul and his political future than any actual concern over our use of drones:

HARTMANN: It was a discussion we have been needing to have ever since the Patriot Act was pushed through in 2002... so to the extent that we have been needing to have that discussion, I'm really pleased. On the other hand, this was Rand Paul kicking off his 2016 presidential bid.

Paul received his answer on the drone strikes and as many have noted, he actually had his answer well before he started his filibuster, but as Hartmann noted here, the question that he should have been asking and to which he did not get an answer is, "What does 'engaged in combat' mean?" when we haven't had a declaration of war since 1941. With the rules in the Patriot Act set so loosely, the executive branch has the freedom to define those terms, as Hartmann put it, pretty well any damn way they want to. With the exception of the neocons, most Americans would not believe that the Constitution grants these rights to the executive branch.

Of course, speaking of neocons, as they also discussed, that's why we saw the likes of Lindsey Graham out there berating Paul and any Republicans who did not mind that the Bush administration was using drones but are now upset that the Obama administration is using those same powers that the Congress ceded to them after 9-11.

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Rand Paul asks one of those controversial questions in the news recently whether this administration will target American citizens on American soil with drone strikes, a hypothetical scenario Paul sees as both possible and a good enough reason to hold up the confirmation of John Brennan as head of the CIA.. But Rand Paul, being the rightwing nutcase he is does what they always do, takes his fearmongering to absurd conclusions to destroy whatever merit his original assertion had.

SEN. RAND PAUL (R-KY): "We are talking about someone eating at a cafe in Boston, or New York, and a Hellfire Missile comes raining in on them. There should be an easy answer from the administration on this. They should say, 'absolutely no, we will not kill Americans in America without an accusation, a trial and a jury.'"

You can watch the entire video here, at Fox News.

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Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) says constituents are telling him that high-capacity magazines should not be banned because people need "at least 50 rounds" to shoot down government drones.

During Thursday interview on Freedom 107 radio, host Jeff Akin asked the Texas Republican how he felt about using unnamed aerial drones for domestic law enforcement.

"It's pretty offensive to most of us," Gohmert opined. "Most of us think if you're going to use a drone and fly over our homes to analyze what's going on in our backyard -- not a lot of talk's been given -- but if you can fly over in the backyard, you can use all kinds of technology to see what's happening inside the home as well. And I know there's been a judge, and this former judge sure thinks you ought to have a warrant to do that kind of thing."

"But I had somebody last week in Washington from either Georgia or Alabama that was saying, 'Look, this goes back to we have got to have at least 50 rounds in our magazines because on average that's about how many it takes to bring down a drone.' I hope he was kidding, I don't know for sure."

"It is serious when the government decides, let's just watch every little thing Americans are doing," he added. "It's big brother taken to a whole new scale."

While they were on the topic of guns and the Second Amendment, Akin also wondered what bills liberals were planning "that could violate that amendment."

"They want the elimination of firearms in America," Gohmert declared. "Some of them have the idea that the Second Amendment was there to allow hunting, not true. You know, it is for our protection -- and the Founders' quotes make that very clear -- including against a government that could run amuck."

"You know, we've got some people who think that Sharia law ought to be the law of the land, forget the Constitution," he asserted. "But the guns are there, that Second Amendment is there to make sure all the rest of the amendments are followed."

Gohmert said that he understood the emotional nature of the issue because one of his friends had lost a husband due to gun violence, but he insisted that "we've got to let our head be what prevails."

"Sometime when you run in with your heart, you make bad laws."

(h/t: Think Progress)

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I'm not sure why PBS and CBS News feel that the public needs to be treated to yet another fawning interview with former Vice President Dick Cheney, but maybe they're hoping to pick up some of that Fox viewership, because Charlie Rose's hour long disgrace propping this guy up is what we're usually treated to on that network.

Apparently Cheney doesn't mind the drone program and called it a "good program" -- but what bothers him about it is not what should disturb most of us, like whether it's legal, the lack of oversight, overreach by the executive branch and the fact that dropping bombs on civilians' heads is just going to create more enemies and potential blowback when people rightfully get sick of watching their friends and their family members killed.

No, Cheney doesn't care about any of that. What bothers him is that we're killing these supposed terrorists instead of torturing them as we were doing under the Bush administration.

Cheney: Obama wants to weaken U.S. role in world:

Cheney insists that Obama's worldview and foreign policy is making the U.S. "vulnerable to the future."

And while Cheney voiced support for Obama's use of drones -- calling it a "good program" -- he said the president's national security nominees reflect "choices ... based on people who won't argue with him" and in the case of Hagel, "I think he wants a Republican to be the foil ... for what he wants to do to the Defense Department, which I think is to do serious, serious damage to our military capabilities."

Turning to a controversial policy of the George W. Bush administration, Cheney defended the use of enhanced interrogation techniques, saying that officials engaged in a "very long, difficult and elaborate process" with the Justice Department to determine "where the red line is."

"And we got approval for the programs that did go, that they were quote 'not torture,'" he said, but added that ultimately the administration stopped the use of waterboarding "because there was so much flak over it."

Rose did actually ask Cheney why he won't call the program torture during the interview, but there was zero follow up to this response. You can add this interview to the mile long list of evidence that proves that anyone who claims that PBS is some "liberal" network deserves to be mocked roundly for such a ridiculous assertion.

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I guess we all knew this was coming. During what he called his "one day old, expanded coverage" of the state of the union address, Jon Stewart had a field day with Marco Rubio and his nervous, flop sweat, dehydrated response to President Obama's speech with a series of sight gags throughout the segment. He also got some knocks in on President Obama for not making a higher priority of our crumbling infrastructure and for pretending that there's been transparency over the drone program.

Stewart saved his more substantive criticism of Rubio for his following segment, where he went after him for doing what we've seen far too often from Republicans, which is attacking the fictional image of Obama that only exists in their own minds.

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I've been listening to the talking heads on the right rant and rave all week that Democrats are hypocrites because they didn't speak up about this drone program from the Obama administration, and that is somehow equal to George W. Bush sanctioning torture. That if everyone is not equally outraged and calling for accountability or impeachment, they should just shut up because they're just partisans who don't really care about any of this if it means speaking out against their own party.

Examples like this one aren't helping the cause any. As Digby noted, we had Fox on the attack, quoting John Yoo and calling the Obama administration hypocrites, and then we were treated to Krystal Ball proving their point:

Today's Fox News Special Report showed footage of Candidate Obama in 2008 hotly condemning the Bush administration's extra-judicial terrorism policies and then the "all-stars" debated whether President Obama and all his supporters are hypocrites. It's hard to argue that there isn't some serious hypocrisy going on here. Unless you are Stephen "those WMD are there somewhere I swear it" Hayes who insisted that he is not a hypocrite, he's nothing but a pansy who's letting terrorists run free, I tell you, free! Everyone nodded solemnly. [...]

Meanwhile on MSNBC, Krystal Ball proves their point. She starts off saying that she's mostly "ok" with the drone program but thinks it needs more transparency and oversight. And then she discusses what really bothers her about the debate: the idea that we should have the same standards for all presidents. No, I'm not kidding:

Look, I voted for President Obama because I trust his values and his judgment and I believe his is a fundamentally responsible actor. Without gratuitously slamming ex-president Bush, I think he displayed extraordinary lapses in judgement in executing his primary responsibility as commander in chief and put troops in harms way imprudently.

President Obama would have exercised better judgment and he has exercised better judgment. The way it stands now the drone program is exclusively within the domain of the Executive. Their protocol, their judgement. So yeah, I feel a whole lot better about the program when the decider, so to speak, is President Obama. That's not to say that again the process shouldn't be codified, that there shouldn't be oversight.

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