“This Story Shall The Good Man Teach His Son”

Everyone was talking last week about Rand Paul’s 13-hour filibuster.  I praised Sen. Paul for challenging a president we don’t trust on his drone policy.

In a Washington Post Op-Ed Paul wrote, “The Senate has the power to restrain the executive branch—and my filibuster was the beginning of the fight to restore a healthy balance of powers. The president still needs to definitively say that the United States will not kill American noncombatants. The Constitution’s Fifth Amendment applies to all Americans; there are no exceptions.”

This president has relentlessly whittled away at the will and spirit of Americans.  As Sen. Paul spoke in the well of the Senate he was unaware that an explosion of support was building.

Thank you to my colleagues in the House & Senate, and to all the Americans who stood w/ me tonight in support of preserving civil liberties.
— Senator Rand Paul (@SenRandPaul) March 7, 2013

I was reminded of the St. Crispin’s Day speech from Act IV, Scene III of William Shakespeare’s Henry V.  The English army, led by the young King Henry V, is hopelessly outnumbered by the French forces at Agincourt.  The battle comes near the end of the Hundred Years War.  They do not expect to survive the day.

This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

Just a few blocks away from the White House, at the pricey Jefferson Hotel, Republicans Lindsey Graham, Tom Coburn, John McCain, Kelly Ayotte, Pat Toomey, Bob Corker, Ron Johnson, Saxby Chambliss, John Hoeven, Dan Coats, Richard Burr and Mike Johanns joined our perfumed potentate to sup on high-dollar grub like Kalamansi Caviar, Lobster Thermidor, Maryland Blue Crab Risotto, Golden Beet Soup with Quail Egg and Filet of Prime Beef with Truffled Potato Mousseline.

McCain, who now loves power and the copious rewards which power confers upon him, once loved liberty.  McCain has been a colossal disappointment for many years and now he’s beclowned himself for criticizing Senator Paul’s filibuster.

Well, Senator McCain my friend, Paul’s filibuster got him the answer he was seeking from a stubborn regime that could have answered his question months ago.

Obama and Holder’s ultimate admission that he lacks such authority vindicates the notion that one senator can, in fact, make a difference.

The increased use of executive powers by this president is a threat to liberty.  Congress can halt this imperial presidency by exercising its constitutional powers.  Paul said his filibuster was the beginning of the fight to restore a healthy balance of powers.

John McCain is a pompous, tired, old warhorse.  I thank him for his service, but urge him to stand down.  He is part and parcel of what is wrong with a very broken Washington.  The increasingly irrelevant Lindsey Graham and young, rising Republican Kelly Ayotte are being led around by their noses by McCain. 

You don’t have to agree with Rand Paul’s wariness of American military interventionism to recognize the shift in politics his filibuster has heralded.  It doesn’t take a stretch of the imagination is see that Americans ache for a restoration of checks and balances on this regime.

For the record, I am not a Paultard, but I applaud the way he set Washington on its ear.