LibertyVoter.Org

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Source: RAND PAUL

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Source: RAND PAUL

In the United States, we are supposed to have a government that is limited with its parameters established by our Constitution. This notion that the federal government can monitor everyone’s phone data is a major departure from how Americans have traditionally viewed the role of government.
If this is acceptable practice, as the White House and many in both parties now say it is, then there are literally no constitutional protections that can be guaranteed anymore to citizens.
In the name of security, say our leaders, the Constitution has become negotiable.

This is what the White House is saying when it defends the National Security Agency’s gathering of Verizon’s client data en masse, or what President Obama calls a ‘modest encroachment’ on our rights, as he assures us that ‘Nobody is listening to your phone calls.’

Perhaps he can also assure us that nobody at the Internal Revenue Service is targeting political dissidents.
Perhaps he can assure us that nobody at the Justice Department is seizing reporters’ phone records.
Sorry, Mr. President, but ‘trust me’ is not good enough.

President Obama says, ‘You can’t have 100 percent security and also then have 100 percent privacy and zero inconvenience.’ But we couldn’t have 100 percent security even if we turned America into a total police state-something too many seem eager for-because there’s no such thing as a risk free society.

When balancing liberty against security, the American tradition has always been to err on the side of liberty. Targeting potential terror suspects by obtaining a warrant is an ‘inconvenience’ the Founders’ intentionally put upon the government in order to protect the privacy of citizens.
Now this president turns this core constitutional principle on its head.

There are also Republicans who seem to want more power for government and less for citizens. One senator, a particularly zealous defender of the surveillance state, has said that he would be fine with ‘censoring the mail’ if ‘necessary’ to keep us safe.

This senator would open citizens’ mail, detain them indefinitely if he decided they were dangerous, claw his way through their trash, peek in their bedrooms if he decided they were an enemy, and then if they dared to ask for a lawyer, he would bark: ‘Shut up! You don’t get a lawyer!’

Such arrogance and tone deafness!

A government as omnipotent as this may be powerful enough to spy on all of its citizens all of the time, but doesn’t seem to be able …read more

Source: RAND PAUL

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Sen. Rand Paul today offered the following speech at a forum on immigration, organized by the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference and Latino Partnership for Conservative Principles.
Por favor disculpen mi Espanol. Como creci en Houston -es un poco ‘espanglish y un poco Tex Mex.
It’s great to be here with you today.
As we continue to debate immigration in Congress this week, I think sometimes the human factor gets lost. When discussing the issue, I think it’s important to remember that we’re talking about people, not just policy.
We’re not talking about criminals we’re talking about immigrant workers caught up in a failed government visa program.
I think it’s always important that we put a human face on immigration and not just talk about numbers and statistics.
I can’t think about immigration without thinking about my own family.
My German great-grandparents didn’t speak much English when they came to America. They didn’t have much, but they also didn’t ask for much-all they wanted was an opportunity.
They began in America peddling vegetables. They finally got that opportunity when they started a dairy business in their garage, scraping together a living, raising a family, and constantly working to give their children a better life than they had.
My great-grandfather came to America in the 1880s. His father died after only six months in America. At 14, my great-grandfather was alone.
He survived and ultimately thrived in his new country with a new language. In their home and their church they spoke German.
As the son of immigrants, my grandfather, who only had an 8th grade education, would live to see his own children all go to college. They became ministers, professors, doctors and accountants and one of them became a Congressman.
My family’s story is like that of millions of others who came to this country. Every generation of immigrants wants these opportunities.
The problem we face today is: How do we now reflect this in our 21st century immigration policy?
It is absolutely vital for both the success of our immigration policy and for the purposes of national security that we finally secure our borders.
Not to stop most immigrants from coming-we welcome them and in fact should seek to increase legal immigration.
The Republican Party must embrace more legal immigration.
Unfortunately, like many of the major debates in Washington, immigration has become …read more

Source: RAND PAUL

Benjamin Franklin famously wrote, ‘Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.’ Meanwhile, our president claims that we cannot have 100% security and 100% privacy and that as a society we have to make some choices. To that I say, no Mr. President, we don’t.
Let’s look, for example, at the recent attacks in Boston. Our government was violating our rights, trolling through millions of phone records, sifting through mountains of data and yet still didn’t notice, or didn’t notice enough, that one of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects was traveling to Chechnya. Perhaps instead of treating every American as a potential terror suspect, the government should concentrate on more targeted analysis and an analysis that doesn’t violate the Bill of Rights.
This assault on personal privacy affects the Facebook generation more than anyone else. Your generation is completely digitized and uploaded. Everything you do is traceable via phone, email and bank records. And it is you, more than anyone, who should be outraged by this astounding assault on your constitutional right to personal privacy.
I hear people say, ‘Well if you aren’t doing anything wrong, then the government will leave you alone.’ But over the last month and a half, this administration has proved that they will target anyone. Under this administration, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has targeted political dissidents, the Department of Justice has seized reporters’ phone records, and now we’ve learned the NSA seized an unlimited amount of Verizon’s client data. So, do you really expect us to trust a government that admittedly targets innocent citizens without probable cause? These overreaching acts are unacceptable under any president, whether Democrat or Republican.
This issue has made for some strange bedfellows in Washington. You have some of my fellow Republicans – I like to call moss-covered – defending Barack Obama’s violation of your rights. Meanwhile, I am being joined by Democratic Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), left-leaning journalist Glenn Greenwald, and Republican Congressman and author of the Patriot Act, Jim Sensebrenner (R-Wisc.).
It is clear that this issue is not about party politics. It is about protecting the civil liberties that our Founding Fathers fought a revolution for. And issues such as this really show you how your political leaders feel about your rights.
What should frustrate you this most is the hypocrisy of it all. In December 2007, then-Senator Barack Obama threatened …read more

Source: RAND PAUL