(pretty long but well worth a read . . . some snips here as a teaser)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/mar/10/paul-filibuster-drones-progressives

All of this put Democrats - who spent eight years flamboyantly

pretending to be champions of due process and opponents of mass secrecy

and executive power abuses - in a very uncomfortable position. The

politician who took such a unique stand in defense of these principles

was not merely a Republican but a leading member of its dreaded Tea

Party wing, while the actor most responsible for the extremist theories

of power being protested was their own beloved leader and his political

party.

But most Democratic Senators ran away as fast as possible from having anything to do with the debate: see here

for the pitifully hilarious excuses they offered for not supporting the

filibuster while claiming to support Paul's general cause. All of those

Democratic Senators other than Merkley and Leahy (and Sanders) voted to

confirm the torture-advocating, secrecy-loving, drone-embracing Brennan

as CIA chief.

Meanwhile, a large bulk of the Democratic and liberal commentariat - led, as usual, by the highly-paid DNC spokesmen called "MSNBC hosts" and echoed, as usual, by various liberal blogs,

which still amusingly fancy themselves as edgy and insurgent checks on

political power rather than faithful servants to it - degraded all of

the weighty issues raised by this episode by processing it through their

stunted, trivial prism of partisan loyalty. They thus dutifully devoted

themselves to reading from the only script they know: Democrats Good, GOP Bad.

To accomplish that, most avoided full-throated defenses of drones

and the power of the president to secretly order US citizens executed

without due process or transparency. They prefer to ignore the fact that

the politician they most deeply admire is a devoted defender of those

policies. After stumbling around for a few days in search of a tactic to

convert this episode into an attack on the GOP and distract from

Obama's extremism, they collectively settled on personalizing the

conflict by focusing on Rand Paul's flaws as a person and a politician

and, in particular, mocking his concerns as "paranoia" (that attack was

echoed, among others, by the war-cheering Washington Post editorial page).

Just as conservatives feared non-existent black helicopters in

the 1990s, they chortled, now conservatives are hiding under their bed

thinking that Obama will kill their neighbors or themselves with drones

while they relax at a barbeque in their backyard. In this they echoed

Bush followers, who constantly mocked

objections to Bush/Cheney executive power abuses as nothing but

paranoia. Besides, they claim, Attorney General Eric Holder has now made

crystal clear that Obama lacks the authority to target US citizens on

US soil for execution by drone, so all of Paul's concerns are nothing

more than wild conspiracies.

The reality is that Paul was doing nothing more than voicing concerns

that have long been voiced by leading civil liberties groups such as the

ACLU. Indeed, the ACLU lavishly praised Paul, saying that "as a result of Sen. Paul's historic filibuster, civil liberties got two wins". In particular, said the ACLU, "Americans

learned about the breathtakingly broad claims of executive authority

undergirding the Obama administration's vast killing program." 

In sum, virtually all of the claims made by these progressive

commentators in opposition to Paul's filibuster are false. Moreover,

last week's Senate drama, and the reaction to it by various factions,

reveals several critical points about how US militarism and the secrecy

that enables it are sustained. I was traveling last week on a speaking

tour and thus watched all of it unfold without writing about it, so I

want to highlight three key points from all of this, centered around

myths propagated by Democrats to demean Paul's filibuster and the

concerns raised by it:

(1) Progressives and their "empathy gap"

The US government's

continuous killing, due-process-free imprisonment, and other rights

abuses under the War on Terror banner has affected one group far more

than any other: Muslims and, increasingly, American Muslims.

Politically, this has been the key fact enabling this to endure. Put

simply, if you're not Muslim, it's very easy to dismiss, minimize or

mock these issues because you can easily tell yourself that they don't

affect you or your family and therefore there is no reason to care.

(see the article for a full breakdown of reasons 2 and 3)

)

"We're borrowing 10% of GDP each year to get 1-2% growth. That isn't"
an improving economy. We're simply mortgaging the future.