Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Rand Paul CPAC 2013 FULL VIDEO and TEXT TRANSCRIPT


Rand Paul CPAC 2013 FULL VIDEO and TEXT TRANSCRIPT, CPAC 2013 - U.S. Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) Published on Mar 14, 2013. Category: Nonprofits and Activism. License: Standard YouTube License.

Rand Paul CPAC 2013

I have a message for the President, a message that is loud and clear, a message that doesn’t mince words.

The message for the President is that no one person gets to decide the law, no one person gets to decide your guilt or innocence.

My question to the President was about more than just killing Americans on American soil.

My question was about whether Presidential power has limits.

Lincoln put it well when he wrote, “Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man, give
him power.”

President Obama who seemed, once upon a time, to respect civil liberties, has become the President who signed a law allowing for the indefinite detention of an American citizen. Indeed, a law that allows an American citizen to be sent to Guantanamo Bay without a trial. President Obama defends his signing of the bill by stating that he has no intention of detaining any American citizen without a trial.

Likewise, he defended his possible targeted Drone strikes against Americans on American soil by indicating that he has no intention of doing so.

Well, my thirteen hour filibuster was a message to the President.

Good intentions are not enough. The presidential oath of office states ‘I WILL protect, preserve, and defend the Constitution,’ NOT ‘I intend to preserve, protect, and defend the constitution.’

Mr. President, good intentions are not enough. We want to know, will you or won’t you defend the Constitution?

Eisenhower wrote,

“How far can you go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without?” If we destroy our enemy but lose what defines our freedom in the process, have we really won?

If we allow one man to charge Americans as enemy combatants and indefinitely detain or drone them, then what exactly is it our brave young men and women are fighting for?

Montesquieu wrote that there can be no liberty if you combine the Executive and the Legislative branches. Likewise, there can be no justice if you combine the Executive and Judicial branch into one.

We separated arrest and accusation from trial and verdict for a reason. When Lewis Carroll’s white queen shouts sentence first, verdict afterwards, the reader’s response is supposed to be ‘But that would be absurd!’

In our country, the police can arrest, but only your peers can convict. We prize our Bill of Rights like no other country. Our Bill of Rights is what defines us and makes us exceptional.

To those who would dismiss this debate as frivolous, I say tell that to the heroic young men and women who have sacrificed their limbs and lives, tell it to the 6,000 parents whose kids died as American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, tell them that the Bill of Rights is no big deal. FULL TEXT TRANSCRIPT IN PDF FORMAT" VIDEO & TRANSCRIPT: Sen. Paul Addresses 40th Annual Conservative Political Action Conference

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