Rand Paul has been celebrated for his 13-hour rant, but when you watch the highlights, it's really just a platform for him to display his tinfoil hat.
March 9, 2013

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Rand Paul was the wrong messenger for the anti-drone message, and his "filibuster" was nothing more than a grab for 13 hours of airtime to air wingnut theories. Here are just a few samples of what he spewed for the record on Wednesday night:

“I will speak until I can no longer speak.”
“No, no said the queen.”
“Everybody is al Qaeda.”
“Hold your tongue said the queen turning purple.”

“If there’s a gentleman or a woman w/ a grenade launcher attacking our buildings or our Capitol, we use lethal force.”

“No we won’t drop bombs on restaurants.”

“Your notification is the buzz of the propellers on the drone as it flies overhead in the seconds before you’re killed. Is that what we really want from our government?”

“Gobbledy-gook!”

“The leap of logic is so fantastic as to boggle the mind. “

“The drone strike program is sort of like a lawn mower.”

“I don’t intend to to break the First Amendment, but I might.”

“Who’s gonna decide when it’s okay to have food in your house and when it’s not?”

“See, there are a lot of questions that aren’t being asked.”

“You believe in the Constitution so much, you might be a terrorist.”

“I’m not talking about someone with a bazooka or a grenade launcher on their shoulder.”

“I was at a Tea Party meeting and I was critical of the President, but I’m not a revolutionary, please don’t kill me.”

“My throat’s already dry, and I just got started.”

“I mean, and if you don’t answer it, basically by not answering you’re answering yes.”

“I would feel a little more comfortable if it wasn’t an accusation from a politician that unleashes Hellfire missiles.”

“Democracies did bad things.”

“I ask, do we know where all the students are?”

“The answers that we’ve gotten are almost more disturbing than getting an answer to tell you the truth.”

“I don’t think the president would purposefully take innocent people and kill them. I really don’t think he’d drop a Hellfire missile on a cafe or restaurant like I’m talking about.”

“You might have a drone attack you in your bed, tonight.”

“If you’re going to kill non-combatants, people eating dinner in America, there have to be some rules.”

“Probably, inevitably, the milkman’s gotta go to the terrorist camp, or the doctor as well.”

“It’s hard to know what to believe.”

It's too bad Rand Paul hijacked what should have been a thoughtful discussion about the use of drones and the use of the filibuster to spout his John Birch black umbrella theories, but he did. Some of those are real doozies, too. I can think of lots of things that might frighten me, but having a drone attack me in my bed tonight is not one of them.

It takes a special imagination to go on like this for hours and hours. Unfortunately the price was a little bit high.

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