You Will Anyway: Rand Paul should be censured and then run out of politics

Thursday, January 30, 2020

Rand Paul should be censured and then run out of politics

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul named the alleged Ukraine intelligence whistleblower Thursday after Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts refused to read a question he submitted at President Trump’s impeachment trial that included the person’s purported name.

The conservative Republican left the proceedings to hold an impromptu press conference at which he fingered the person whom right-wing media have named as the CIA operative in the White House who filed a complaint about Trump’s infamous July 25 call to Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Paul read out his conspiratorial question that Roberts twice refused to read inside the chamber, apparently out of the judge’s respect for federal law protecting whistleblowers from retaliation.

NY Daily News

Totally disgusting.

The whistleblower’s lawyer, Mark Zaid, declined to comment.

Bradley Moss, a law partner of Zaid, hit back within minutes, calling on Paul to resign.

[...]

Presidential son Donald Trump Jr. called outing the whistleblower a crucial part of his dad’s defense against the impeachment effort led by Rep. Adam Schiff.

Despicable little prick.

Paul (R-Ky.), a fiery defender of Trump, first sought to sneak the whistleblower’s name into the impeachment record on Wednesday night.

Roberts refused to read his question and repeated his refusal when Paul resubmitted it Thursday.

“The presiding officer declines to read the question as submitted,” Roberts said.

Under Senate rules, lawmakers are supposed to remain in the chamber while the trial is in session, although some exceptions are made for bathroom and other breaks. It’s unclear if Paul could face any punishment for holding a press conference as the trial continued inside the Senate chamber.

Not likely. And he's probably not the only one who has.

Federal law prohibits retaliating against government workers who file whistleblower complaints. It doesn’t explicitly bar identifying them, although legal experts say anyone publicly disclosing the name of a whistleblower might be opening themselves up to liability for any harm they undergo.

Besides it being simply an unconscionable act of intimidation and a tool of oppression.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

"It takes only a bit of knowledge of history to realize how dangerous it is to think that the people who run the country know what they are doing." -- Howard Zinn

"It’s not about not having something to hide; it’s about having something to lose. What we lose when we’re under observation is our humanity...Rights are inherent to our nature, they’re not granted by governments, they’re guaranteed by governments. They’re protected by governments." -- Edward Snowden

"Terrorism is the willingness to kill large numbers of people for some presumably good cause.” -- Howard Zinn

"What we have is a foreign policy which is essentially a marketing strategy for selling weapons." -- Jill Stein

"We should always remember that the danger to societies from security services is not that they will spontaneously decide to embrace [Stasi style] mustache twirling and jackboots to bear us bodily into dark places, but that the slowly shifting foundation of policy will make it such that mustaches and jackboots are discovered to prove an operational advantage toward a necessary purpose.” ~ Edward Snowden

"America: just a nation of two hundred million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable." ~ Hunter S. Thompson

"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws." ~ Mayer Rothschild

"News is what somebody does not want you to print. All the rest is advertising." ~ LACUNA

"What matters in journalism isn't politics, which are as universal and inescapable as breathing. What matters -- along with a fundamentally adversarial attitude toward government, without which "journalism" is simply public relations -- is integrity, transparency, evidence, coherence, and principle. These are the principles on which we should evaluate the quality of journalism, and their absence is why some journalists are so desperate to get you to focus on something else." ~ Barry Eisler

"There is no inverse relationship between freedom and security. Less of one does not lead to more of the other. People with no rights are not safe from terrorist attack." ~ Molly Ivins

"The brain of our species is, as we know, made up largely of potassium, phosphorus, propaganda, and politics, with the result that how not to understand what should be clearer is becoming easier and easier for all of us." ~ James Thurber

"The highest patriotism is not a blind acceptance of official policy, but a love of one's country deep enough to call her to a higher plane....When you hold up your arm and swear to uphold the Constitution, you don’t say, 'Except in wartime.'" -- George McGovern

"I’ll believe that corporations are people when Texas executes one." ~ Bill Moyers

"When did hope become a political dynamic? Hope is right below wishful thinking and right above performing a rain dance on the scale of activity." ~ Rich Hall

Life, as Explained in "Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead"

GUILDENSTERN: What a fine persecution---to be kept intrigued without ever quite being enlightened.

------
ROSENCRANTZ : The only thing that makes it bearable is the irrational belief that somebody interesting will come on in a minute.

------
GUILDENSTERN: But for God's sake what are we supposed to do?!

PLAYER: Relax. Respond. That's what people do. You can't go through life questioning your situation at every turn.

GUILDENSTERN: But we don't know what's going on, or what to do with ourselves. We don't know how to act.

PLAYER: Act natural. You know why you're here at least.

GUILDENSTERN: We only know what we're told, and that's little enough. And for all we know it isn't even true.

PLAYER: For all anyone knows, nothing is. Everything has to be taken on trust; truth is only that which is taken to be true. It's the currency of living. There may be nothing behind it, but it doesn't make any difference so long as it is honoured. One acts on assumptions.

------
GUILDENSTERN : We act on scraps of information... sifting half-remembered directions that we can hardly separate from instinct.

------
PLAYER: Life is a gamble, at terrible odds-if it was a bet you wouldn't take it.