Exclusive – Rand Paul: Stop Warping Reagan’s Foreign Policy

(Breitbart) – Every Republican likes to think he or she is the next Ronald Reagan. Some who say this do so for lack of their own ideas and agenda. Reagan was a great leader and President. But too often people make him into something he wasn’t in order to serve their own political purposes.

Reagan clearly believed in a strong national defense and in “Peace through Strength.” He stood up to the Soviet Union, and he led a world that pushed back against Communism.

But Reagan also believed in diplomacy and demonstrated a reasoned approach to our nuclear negotiations with the Soviets. Reagan’s shrewd diplomacy would eventually lessen the nuclear arsenals of both countries.

Many forget today that Reagan’s decision to meet with Mikhail Gorbachev was harshly criticized by the Republican hawks of his time, some of whom would even call Reagan an appeaser. In the Middle East, Reagan strategically pulled back our forces after the tragedy in Lebanon in 1983 that killed 241 Marines, realizing the cost of American lives was too great for the mission.

Without a clearly defined mission, exit strategy or acceptable rationale for risking soldiers lives, Reagan possessed the leadership to reassess and readjust.

Today, we forget that some of the Republican hawks of his time criticized Reagan harshly for this too, again, calling him an appeaser.

I don’t claim to be the next Ronald Reagan nor do I attempt to disparage fellow Republicans as not being sufficiently Reaganesque. But I will remind anyone who thinks we will win elections by trashing previous Republican nominees or holding oneself out as some paragon in the mold of Reagan, that splintering the party is not the route to victory.

I met Ronald Reagan as a teenager when my father was a Reagan delegate in 1976. I greatly admire Reagan’s projection of “Peace through Strength.” I believe, as he did, that our National Defense should be second to none, that defense of the country is the primary Constitutional role of the Federal Government.

There is no greater priority for Congress than defense of the nation.

I also greatly admire that Reagan was not rash or reckless with regard to war. Reagan advised potential foreign adversaries not to mistake our reluctance for war for a lack of resolve.

What America needs today is a Commander-in-Chief who will defend the country and project strength, but who is also not eager for war.

Regarding Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, for example, there is little difference among most Republicans on what to do. All of us believe we should stand up to Putin’s aggression. Virtually no one believes we should intervene militarily.

So we are then faced with a finite menu of diplomatic measures to isolate Russia, on most of which we all agree, such as sanctions and increased economic pressure.

Yet, some politicians have used this time to beat their chest. What we don’t need right now is politicians who have never seen war talking tough for the sake of their political careers.

America deserves better than that. So do our soldiers.

More than any other category of voters, our men and women in uniform understand the anguish that comes with their ninth and tenth tours in battle zones. These brave young patriots do their duty, they do as they’re told, but they don’t mistake their heroism for a love of war.

Many agree with General Eisenhower who said, “I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.”

There is a time for military action, such as after 9/11. There is a time for diplomacy and the strategic use of soft power, such as now with Russia. Diplomacy requires resolve but also thoughtfulness and intelligence.

This is something Reagan always knew.

Reagan said his greatest regret as President was sending those Marines to Beirut in the first place.

How many leaders were as great as Reagan, willing to admit their mistakes, learn from them and put their country before their own reputation and legacy?

Today’s Republicans should concentrate on establishing their own identities and agendas, as opposed to simply latching onto Ronald Reagan’s legacy—or worse, misrepresenting it.

[H/T Breitbart: Sen. Rand Paul]

Rand Paul: Prediction About Future Presidential Elections May Frighten Half the Country

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Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) made a bold prediction about the remaining presidential elections in his lifetime during an interview with Glenn Beck that aired Thursday.

“I think Republicans will not win again in my lifetime … unless they become a new GOP, a new Republican Party,” Paul said evenly. “And it has to be a transformation. Not a little tweaking at the edges.”

Paul remained noncommittal about his own speculated presidential ambitions, but said he believes people “from both parties” would rally to a candidate that said “we just need to turn over on all this” and advocated issues like term limits, reading the bills, and single-purpose bills.

The senator expressed little interest in the formation of a third party.

“I think that … you can transform a party,” he maintained. “…I’ve worked for a third party candidate, a guy that was my dad. It’s very difficult. The laws are set against you.”

The two also discussed the Republican Party’s reported issues with conveying its message to voters.

“You have to take your message to people in a way they can understand it,” Paul asserted.

The senator said, for example, that if he is speaking with 1,000 young people, he doesn’t focus on taxes and regulation, but about the government looking at your cellphone.

He added that Republicans have failed to speak with African American and Hispanic communities about how the war on drugs and our legal system has disproportionately affected them.

The primary goal, Paul said, is to present the “ideas of liberty” to everyone.

“There are many people who are open among all these disaffected groups, who really aren’t steadfast supporters of Obama or an ideology,” Paul asserted. “I think they’re open to listening, but we have to have a better message and a better presentation of it.”

“There is a struggle going on within the Republican Party,” Paul admitted. “I tell people it’s not new, and I’m not ashamed of it. I’m proud of the fact that there is a struggle. And I will struggle to make the Republican Party a different party, a bigger party, a more diverse party, and a party that can win national elections again.”

Paul recalled being a “13-year-old kid” at the 1976 convention when Ronald Reagan challenged Gerald Ford, saying there is a successful precedent of conservatives taking on the “establishment.”

“Everybody told Reagan to sit back and shut up,” Paul remarked. “They told him it wasn’t his time, and it wasn’t going to be his time. The establishment wanted Ford … It was bitterly fought, but in the end, Reagan won and the party became a better place, at least for a while. We need to have that debate again, and we need to be a bigger, stronger party.”

[H/T The Blaze]

Rand Paul Files Class Action Lawsuit Against Obama, NSA, FBI over Spying

(Breitbart) — Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) on Wednesday filed a class action lawsuit against President Barack Obama and other administration officials for the National Security Agency (NSA) program that collected millions of Americans’ phone and other records. FreedomWorks, a grassroots Tea Party-aligned conservative organization, is a co-plaintiff with Sen. Paul in the class action suit.

“On behalf of myself, FreedomWorks, and everyone else in America who has a phone, I’m filing suit against the President of the United States in defense of the Fourth Amendment,” Paul said at a press conference outside the U.S. District Court near the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday morning. “We will ask the question in court whether a single warrant could apply to the records of every American phone user all of the time without limits and without individualization.”

The lawsuit’s defendants include President Obama, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, NSA director Keith Alexander, and FBI director James Comey.

FreedomWorks president Matt Kibbe said at the press conference that he thinks “this is probably one of the most important things that my organization has ever participated in.” FreedomWorks will help organize grassroots-level activists to get involved in the suit, he said. “FreedomWorks is participating in this class action on behalf of our staff, on behalf of our six million plus members, and frankly on behalf of anybody who has made a phone call since 2006,” Kibbe added. Kibbe’s organization launched a website for Americans to get involved in the suit, too.

Also present at Wednesday’s press conference was former Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, who, since losing a gubernatorial bid to Democrat Terry McAuliffe, has signed up to help Paul and FreedomWorks with as legal counsel on this lawsuit.

Cuccinelli said the class action suit he filed on behalf of his clients Paul and Kibbe on Wednesday is aimed at trying to “vindicate the Fourth Amendment rights of every American who uses a phone.”

“If you don’t use a phone and haven’t in the last five years, don’t worry about this case; it doesn’t affect you,” Cuccinelli said at the presser. “If you have used a phone in the last five years, this case is about protecting your rights against your own government and an invasion of your privacy. We hope that when this path is all done and we’re at the end of it, we will have pushed the federal government back across the line of trampling the Constitution yet again.”

Cuccinelli said the relief the plaintiffs are seeking from the government is “purely injunctive,” meaning that the “court is going to order these folks to stop doing what they’re doing: taking phone records, keeping them and searching them.”

“We expect that if you look at several levels of court, this will be a several years-long process,” he added. The federal government has to answer to this lawsuit’s filing in two months’ time, Cuccinelli said, adding that he thinks “that will be the next round.”

When asked by Breitbart News how confident he was that he, Paul, and Kibbe will win this lawsuit, Cuccinelli responded that he and the others “come here optimistic.”

“This has gone both ways in other courts,” he said. “This has not gone very far in the courts, these questions. We will be the first — I expect, the first — class certified [lawsuit] to carry forward this protection of the Fourth Amendment on behalf of virtually all Americans. I am optimistic that when this is all said and done, however it plays it out in the lower courts, that when the Supreme Court ultimately rules on these questions that Americans’ Fourth Amendment rights will be vindicated and we will prevail.”

Other class action suits have been filed against the NSA but have not received class certification yet.

Paul said that in addition to this lawsuit, which he is filing as a U.S. Citizen and not as a lawmaker, he will be continuing legislative activities against the NSA’s snooping program. “I am pursuing reforms of the NSA,” Paul said. “I have pursued a reform also of the FISA [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance] court that would allow an appeal from the secret court into the Supreme Court.”

[H/T Breitbart]

Why a Sitting U.S. Senator Is Following Through on His Threat to Sue President Obama

Following through on previous threats, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) will sue President Barack Obama and others in his administration over the National Security Agency’s massive surveillance programs, the senator’s political action committee confirmed.

Paul plans to file the lawsuit on Wednesday morning at the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. He will reportedly be joined by FreedomWorks President Matt Kibbe and former Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli.

In addition to Obama, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, Director of the National Security Agency Keith Alexander and FBI Director James Comey will also be listed as defendants in the class-action lawsuit.

“I am filing a lawsuit against President Barack Obama because he has publicly refused to stop a clear and continuing violation of the 4th Amendment,” Paul said in a statement. “The Bill of Rights protects all citizens from general warrants. I expect this case to go all the way to the Supreme Court and I predict the American people will win.”

A press conference featuring Paul, Kibbe and Cuccinelli is planned after the lawsuit is filed.

Internet users who visit Paul’s political action committee website, RandPac.com, are given the option to join the class-action lawsuit and “stand with Rand.”

As TheBlaze reported last week, Paul announced his plans to sue the Obama administration last week on “Hannity.”

[H/T TheBlaze]

Rand Paul: Benghazi Should Disqualify Hillary from Ever Holding High Office

(Breitbart) — Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) in Houston on Saturday night commented on the possibility of a 2016 presidential run for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton…

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[H/T Breitbart]

Rand Paul Joins Klayman in Fight Against NSA and Obama Administration

(WND) — The battle against the National Security Agency’s monitoring of citizens’ telephone-call data surged to a new level today with word that Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., will join the campaign that until now has been led by attorney Larry Klayman, founder of Freedom Watch.

Klayman’s class-action legal challenge to NSA spy operations last month won a favorable ruling from a federal judge, who said it likely is unconstitutional, prompting an Obama administration appeal.

According to The Hill, Paul will file a class-action lawsuit against the NSA after recruiting thousands of people to be plaintiffs.

Although Paul has talked about his plans for several weeks, it was Breitbart News that reported today the action would come soon.

The action is to be brought by Paul as a citizen, not as a senator, and apparently will charge that the surveillance program the NSA uses to gather metadata on U.S. citizens violates the Fourth Amendment.

The senator’s campaign website was used to recruit names, a move set up after Paul suggested months ago he could force the government to change its strategies if he could get 10 million Americans to protest.

In a commentary for WND, Klayman welcomed Paul’s influence to the fight.

Help Larry Klayman with his class-action suit against Obama’s use of the NSA to violate Americans’ rights

“I invite Sen. Paul to join our ongoing class actions, as they have already proven to be successful in large part – given Judge Leon’s unconstitutionality ruling. The other plaintiffs and I are pleased that Paul also is fighting to slay the NSA express,” Klayman wrote.

“The bottom line is this: I am pleased that the force of our legal actions with regard to the NSA and this huge violation of constitutional rights has finally caused many in the nation to take heed of the strength of our cases. For what is now occurring with this spy agency, and others like the CIA, cannot stand. We the people cannot allow a tyrannical government to run roughshod over our Fourth, First and Fifth Amendment constitutional rights. Our Founding Fathers risked their fortunes and lives to win freedom. We owe it to them to take whatever legal steps we must to preserve this freedom for ourselves, our loved ones, and the country as a whole.”

It was Judge Richard J. Leon, in two class-action cases that Klayman filed last June, who ruled against the NSA.

“I hereby give the government fair notice that should my ruling be upheld, this order will go into effect forthwith,” the judge wrote. “Accordingly, I fully expect that during the appellate process, which will consume at least the next six months, the government will take whatever steps necessary to prepare itself to comply with this order when, and if, it is upheld. Suffice it to say, requesting further time to comply with this order months from now will not be well received and could result in collateral sanctions.”

He said the practice likely is unconstitutional, calling it “Orwellian.”

Today, after being prompted by Klayman, the federal government filed a notice of appeal of the case.

Klayman had written to Leon asking for a status conference, saying “it appears that the Obama Justice Department is hanging back to delay implementation of the court’s preliminary injunction order – as it likely intends to ‘stretch’ out the appellate process.”

He had argued that it would be prudent to discuss “the procedure and timing for this case to move forward through discovery while the NSA defendant pursues any appeal of the court’s stayed preliminary injunction order.”

In a separate strategy move, the Obama administration also went to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, a special court that oversees secret government operations, and obtained permission for the NSA to “keep collecting every American’s telephone records every day,” despite the ruling in Klayman’s case.

Klayman told WND the special court “jumps at the Obama administration’s requests” and is “a national disgrace.”

He said he will fight the ongoing collection however he can.

“It’s why the American people, frankly, are in a state of revolution,” he said.

After Leon’s decision in Klayman’s case, District Judge William Pauley in Washington said in a separate case, brought by the ACLU, he thinks the NSA program is legal, setting up the type of conflict that frequently needs to be resolved by a superior court.

At the time, Klayman said: “What’s most dangerous about what is going on is the fact that every time someone picks up their phone, or sends an email, or goes to social media like Facebook, or uses Skype, they now know that the government is watching. And this keeps us from being critical of the government. … And that’s not just un-American, it’s like the former Soviet Union or China.”

He continued: “If our Founding Fathers had lived in these times, and if King George III had had an NSA with that kind of technological capability, the Founding Fathers would have been picked up, arrested and executed before they ever got to Philadelphia to sign the Declaration of Independence.

“We live in what the judge said, and I used the term, too, when I appeared in front of him, an Orwellian state.”

Get Larry Klayman’s fascinating account of his battle with the powers that be: “Whores: Why and How I Came to Fight the Establishment”

Klayman said the fight is about more than just government spying.

“Unfortunately, the current government no longer represents the people of this country. Judge Pauley is rubberstamping total government power. The reality is that the legislative and executive branches of government created this constitutional crisis with the NSA which is now spiraling out of control. Judge Leon rightfully called the NSA’s program ‘almost-Orwellian technology.’”

Klayman said: “Legitimate spying on terrorism does not trump respecting the civil liberties and freedom of the American people, as Judge Pauley ruled on page 52 of his decision. The rights of the American people consistent with our Constitution cannot be left at the hands of the other two branches. This is a formula for revolution as the government should not have an absolute right to intercept everything.”

Support attorney Larry Klayman as he mobilizes freedom-loving Americans from all over the country to stop President Obama’s spying on U.S. citizens and to preserve our freedoms!

[H/T WND]

BREAKING: Rand Paul To File Class Action Lawsuit Against Obama Administration

(Breitbart) — Sen. Paul will be discussing the lawsuit in an exclusive appearance on Fox News with host Eric Bolling at 10 PM ET on Friday. Breitbart News has learned that Paul will file the class action lawsuit soon in the D.C. District Court and that he will be filing it as an individual, not as a U.S. Senator. For a U.S. Senator to file a such a class action lawsuit against the President of the United States would be extremely rare.

This lawsuit allows the American people to join together in a grassroots manner against President Obama’s NSA with a sitting U.S. Senator at the helm. Two prior class action lawsuits were filed in June. Classes have not yet been certified in those cases.

The focus of the lawsuit will be how the NSA’s actions violate the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution. The lawsuit will target the NSA’s metadata program.
Via Paul’s campaign website, more than 300,000 Americans have already indicated they will sign up for the suit when it is officially filed in D.C. District court. Americans can join the lawsuit by visiting Paul’s website.

The class action suit from Sen. Paul against the president comes on the heels of two different conflicting court rulings in individual suits against the NSA, with one court ruling that the NSA was within its bounds to spy on Americans shortly after a different court ruled the NSA’s actions were unconstitutional. The conflicting decisions all but guarantee an eventual Supreme Court-level case on the matter.

[H/T Breitbart]

Join Rand Paul’s class action suit against Obama:

Rand Paul: Will Place a ‘Senatorial Hold’ Unless Dirty Harry Allows ‘Audit the Fed’ Bill to Senate Floor

[H/T Breitbart]: Senator Rand Paul woke up the Washington political scene on October 25th by leaking that he intends to place a “Senatorial hold” on the upcoming Presidential nomination of Janet Yellen to be the next Chairperson of the U.S. Federal Reserve, unless Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid allows his “Audit the Fed” bill to go to a Senate floor vote.

Since its 1913 founding, the U.S. Federal Reserve has been allowed to operate in such relative secrecy that it has been described as “like a hall of mirrors and the Fed is that big one at the end that makes everything else look like its upside-down.” Rand Paul’s goal is to unite conservative Tea Partiers, liberal progressives, and millennials in a grand coalition to restrain the crony capitalism between Washington, D.C. lobbyists and Wall Street money interests.

The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act’s one-time mandated audit of emergency lending activities during the 2008 Financial Crisis is the only published glimpse into the secretive financial dealings of the Fed. The audit divulged that the Fed had directly loaned over $16 trillion to selected banks and corporations. Few doubt the importance of the Fed providing temporary liquidity to stabilize markets after the huge investment firm of Lehman Brothers filed bankruptcy on September 15, 2008. But for the last five years, the Fed has continued to use its money printing capability to dramatically subsidize big bank profitability with artificially low interest rates, causing small banks to shrivel and seniors who rely on the income from savings deposits to suffer badly.

Current Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has vigorously opposed annual audits of the Fed by claiming that any transparency might hamper the Fed’s ability to quickly and creatively spur an economy that is teetering on recession. But many left, right, and libertarian economists believe the Fed’s discretionary actions only serve the interests of the powerful and are often counter-productive to small businesses and American workers.

Five years after the banks were bailed out by the American taxpayers, the U.S. banking system is generating record profits thanks to $3.6 trillion of the Fed’s generosity. But despite the Fed printing money, over the last two years employment has been treading water by growing at the same 1.7% rate as the annual population growth. Failing to grow jobs faster than new entrants join the labor force also caused the duration period of unemployment to rise from 10-20 weeks from 1980 to 2009 to 35-40 weeks recently.

The Fed also allowed a substantial increase in risk taking by financing banks’ dominate position in leveraged derivative speculation. Powered by the Fed’s cheap money, trading and investment banking activities generated more than forty per cent of JPMorgan’s annual profit of $24.4 billion reported in July. Without a Fed audit, no outsider can be exactly sure how much risk American banks are taking with derivatives. But with the world’s annual economy of only $72 trillion and the outstanding derivatives having grown rapidly to $700 trillion, the leverage must be enormous.

Since the Federal Reserve System is officially owned by its member banks and its Board and Chairman are appointed by the Senate, the Fed supposedly acts as an “independent entity within government.” However, the Federal Reserve’s activities have almost never been subject to any oversight by Congress. Consequently, the Federal Reserve seems to be “independent of government.”

Perhaps the real reason Congress has taken a hands-off approach is the Fed is highly profitable, and, under Federal Reserve Act Section 7(b), a big cut of that profit is paid each year as a dividend to the federal government. Although under law the Fed’s dividend is supposed to “supplement the gold reserve held against outstanding United States notes” and pay down the “outstanding bonded indebtedness of the United States,” Congress has been spending the Fed’s $80 billion dividend for many years.

Rand Paul, under the Standing Rules of the United States Senate, has the right to prevent a motion for the nomination of Janet Yellen from reaching a vote on the Senate floor. Majority Leader Harry Reid has used the same Senate rules to prevent a vote on Paul’s “Audit the Fed” bill, introduced with 25 bipartisan sponsors in February 2013.

Over 70% of the American public has favored auditing the Fed for years, but it was Rand Paul’s father, former Congressman Ron Paul, that became a rock star on college campuses championing a millennial revolt to force the audit and eventual abolishment of the Federal Reserve for debasing the dollar and crony capitalism.

By forcing Harry Reid and his Senate allies who secretly oppose “Audit the Fed” to go on record with a very unpopular roll call vote, Senator Paul is demonstrating his principled leadership and the building of a powerful new coalition of American voters.

Rand Paul: Powerful Speech at Values Voter Summit War on ‘There’s a World-Wide War on Christianity’

At the Values Voter Summit this week, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) spoke at length about the persecution of Christians all across the Middle East. He also referenced the percentage of Muslims in Egypt, Jordan, and Pakistan who “sympathize with violence against Christians”. That number adds up to over 40 million and it precisely these no-nonsense figures that westerners should have been focusing on for years.

[Videos]: Superstars and Future of Conservatives: Mike Lee, Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Mark Levin, and Ben Carson Speak at Values Voter Summit 2013

Mike Lee

Ted Cruz

Rand Paul

Mark Levin

Dr. Ben Carson