We are in the middle now, of a week most crucial in our nation's history, a week that will determine the future of the Patriot Act and the state of our own civil liberties and fidelity to the Constitution along with it. Yet after a media blackout during a crucial cloture vote in the U.S. Senate on Monday, you still wouldn't likely even know about this unfolding drama by getting your "news" from most of America's mainstream media sources.This is the story of a bill that allows the executive branch to conduct searches and wiretaps without the constitutionally-required court warrant specifically naming the place or person to be searched, with a sworn statement from authorities giving a clear reason on the basis of probable cause. This is the story of key provisions in that bill, which are set to expire this Friday, provisions which violate the 1st, 4th, and 5th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, and which threaten the freedoms protected in all the others.
This is the story of establishment leaders and a complicit media working hard to renew those provisions with as little debate, deliberation, or public awareness as possible, despite promising transparency, deliberation, and representative democracy to us on this very bill, which has never received the level of public attention and debate that so controversial an act deserves.
This is the story of one man, a Washington outsider, chosen by the Tea Party in the proud commonwealth of Kentucky to send a message to the establishment that we will not stand for their tyranny any longer, and his struggle to forestall the renewal of this most hateful act of Congress as long as possible, and to knock the teeth out of it so as to protect and preserve our civil liberties, which are our birthright, granted by God Almighty and enshrined in laws sealed by the blood of patriots so many years ago at our nation's Founding.
Most freshman Senators in the nation's capitol lie low, cut deals, make friends, and play the game. Not Senator Rand Paul, the most interesting, the most bold, the most principled, and it's beginning to appear-- the most skilled statesman and parliamentarian to set foot in the U.S. Senate chamber for a generation.
Rand Paul is single-handedly holding back the tide of tyranny against these states united, attaching amendments to the renewal bill that would at least soften the blow to our liberties if it were to finally pass, and spending hours filibustering and holding off a final vote until the Patriot Act's provisions finally expire at 12:00 am Friday, May 27, 2011.
By contrast, the establishment's man, a weary, frustrated, and wilted Majority Leader Harry Reid, gave a speech on the Senate floor to weasel, rationalize, and justify away the Senate's lack of deliberation on this most crucial of issues, the renewal of the so-called Patriot Act, offering shamelessly that: "There was every desire, from my perspective, and I think [of] this body, to have a full, complete debate on the Patriot Act. But the Senate doesn't always work that way."
History is being made now, as the battle rages on Capitol Hill, time ticking away as our nation rushes headlong toward that critical deadline late Thursday night, the final outcome uncertain. As with all crimes, which are usually committed under cover of night, our so-called leaders (a misnomer and a lie if there ever was one, save for that one, true leader Rand Paul) are at work to commit this great crime under cover of media silence-- thank God for the Internet and the blogosphere! (hit the tip jar!)
In the midst of the darkness and a host of determined Goliaths, there stands one David, one true man with a spine, and a chest, and a heart of flesh, slinging amendments as stones to fell the Goliath menacing at our gates, filibustering for hours alone as David once stood brave and alone against the mighty Philistines. There stands one man, America's Senator, Liberty's Senator, a voice of the People raging mightily against the hosts of tyranny and lawlessness that would renew this act which slanders true patriotism by its very name.
This true patriot-- Senator Rand Paul.
