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Sen. Rand Paul on NSA Surveillance: ‘I’m Not Sure When I’m Being Lied To’ Now

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Photo Credit: J. Scott Applewhite

Photo Credit: J. Scott Applewhite

By David Sherfinsk. Sen. Rand Paul, Kentucky Republican, said Wednesday that Tuesday testimony from intelligence officials on the government’s data-surveillance programs did little to close what he called a “credibility gap.”

He pointed to testimony that Director of National IntelligenceJames Clapper gave during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing in March when asked if the National Security Agency gathers “any type of data at all” on Americans.”

“No, sir,” Mr. Clapper said. “Not wittingly.”

“I guess the problem is ever since Clapper lied in March to us and said they weren’t collecting any data on Americans, there’s a credibility gap now, and it’s hard for us to really trust the intelligence community because the head of the intelligence community directly lied to the Senate and said they were collecting no data from Americans,” Mr. Paul said on “Fox and Friends.” “So I’m not sure when I’m being lied to and when they’re being honest.”

Mr. Clapper later said in an interview on NBC that the question didn’t have a simple yes or no answer, and that he answered “in what I thought was the most truthful or least untruthful manner by saying no.” Read more from this story HERE.

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California Rep. Duncan Hunter wants audit of U.S. secrecy in wake of NSA leak

By Shaun Waterman. A Republican congressman called Wednesday for an audit of all U.S. government secrecy standards, saying “classification inflation” is forcing federal agencies to issue more and more clearances, increasing the chances for leaks about vital programs.

“Overclassification,” or labeling things secret that don’t really need it, “stands to dangerously expand access to material that should ordinarily be limited,” wrote Rep. Duncan Hunter of California, a Marine combat veteran who sits on the House Armed Services Committee.

Mr. Hunter said he was calling for the audit because of the recent leak about the National Security Agency’s top secret data-gathering on telephone and Internet communications.

The leak calls for “a thorough assessment of the current classification system,” Mr. Hunter said in a letter asking the Government Accountability Office, Congress‘ investigative branch, to perform the audit.

Five million people in the United States have security clearances, the majority of them contractors. More than 1.5 million have top secret clearances, like the one possessed by self-proclaimed NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. Read more from this story HERE.

Vice President Biden: Cruz, Paul Control the GOP

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Photo Credit: Matt Rourke

By Dave Boyer. At a fundraiser late Friday night in San Francisco, Mr. Biden said there is no one in the Republican Party in Congress with whom the administration can negotiate anymore.

“There’s no one with whom to deal with and there’s no one in charge anymore,” Mr. Biden said, at one point pounding the podium with his fist.

Referring to Mr. Paul and Mr. Cruz, both first-term senators, the vice president said he’s never before seen lawmakers with their conservative views.

“They are the ones that control the Republican party right now, literally,” Mr. Biden said. “I’ve never seen a time in all the years I was in the Senate that two freshmen have so much impact on the entirety of the Republican party.”

He did call them “bright young guys.” Read more from this story HERE.

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Biden slaps GOP for letting Cruz, Paul ‘control’ the party

By Paul Bedard. Just six months after he cut a fiscal cliff deal with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Vice President Joe Biden declared Friday night that the GOP has no adult leadership and he said it is being pushed around by two “bright new guys,” Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Rand Paul of Kentucky.

“This is not your father’s Republican Party, it’s fundamentally different,” he said at a San Francisco Democratic Party fundraiser. “There’s no one with whom to deal with and there’s no one in charge anymore.”

In December and January, Biden worked closely with senior GOP leaders like McConnell to work out a budget deal that halted the nation’s fall over the so-called fiscal cliff.

But in his 10 minute address at the home of Dawn Ross and Doug Hickey, the CEO of BinWise, a beverage distribution company in San Francisco, Biden forgot all that to slam the emergence of Tea Party-backed Cruz and Paul, part of the group GOP Sen. John McCain dubbed “wing nuts.” Read more from this story HERE.

Rand Paul Warns that US Taxpayers Could Fund Attack on Israel

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Photo Credit: AP

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul on Thursday slammed the administration’s funding and arming of Israel’s foes, including Egypt, and said it is likely that if Muslim nations attack Israel as feared, American taxpayers might be partly responsible.

Addressing the Faith & Freedom Coalition convention in Washington, he also called for an end to funding of nations that persecute Christians. “Christians in Iraq, Libya, Egypt and Syria are on the run—persecuted or under fire—and yet, we continue to send aid to the folks chasing them,” said Paul. “While they burn the American flag and the mobs chant ‘Death to America,’ more of your money is sent to these haters of Christianity. Not one more penny to countries that are burning the American flag.”

Paul, who recently visited Israel to show his support for the Jewish State, expanded his embrace in calling for an end to the administration’s plan to send Air Force jets to Egypt and continue the long-standing aid to the nation, now under control of Muslim radicals. “The new leader of Egypt is Mohammed Morsi, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. Recently, he stood by when a radical cleric said a prayer for the destruction of Israel and her supporters in his presence,” said Paul.
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“How does your government respond? The bipartisan consensus in Washington vows to increase Egypt’s funding. The president is currently requesting a billion dollar increase in aid to Egypt. This is an outrage!

Read more from this story HERE.

Rand Paul: Worldwide War on Christianity Being Waged (+video)

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Photo Credit: Newsmax

“The war on Christianity” waged by “liberal elites” in the United States really is a worldwide effort being funded by American taxpayers, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., told a gathering of evangelicals on Thursday.

Speaking at the opening-day luncheon of the Faith & Freedom Coalition’s three-day “Road to Majority” event in Washington, D.C., Paul gave examples of Christians and other freedom-lovers who have been severely persecuted by governments supported by the United States, CBN News reported.

“You are being taxed to send money to countries that are not only intolerant of Christians but openly hostile,” Paul said. “Christians are imprisoned and threatened with death for their beliefs.”

Paul said he tried to introduce a bill preventing Libya, Egypt, and Pakistan from getting more foreign aid unless they turn over the killers of Ambassador Chris Stevens, pledged to protect U.S. embassies, and that Pakistan release Dr. Shakil Afridi, who was imprisoned for helping the U.S. capture Osama bin Ladin. It was voted down overwhelmingly.

“Is it any wonder that Congress has a 10 percent approval rating?” he asked. “In Egypt, in Pakistan, they burn our flag. I say not one penny more to countries that burn the American flag.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Sorry, Mr. Obama, The Constitution is Not Negotiable (+video)

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Photo Credit: Fox News

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.

Read more from this story HERE.

Sen. Rand Paul: We Fought a Revolution Over this Kind of Tyranny

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When Americans expressed outrage last week over the seizure and surveillance of Verizon’s client data by the National Security Agency, President Obama responded: “In the abstract, you can complain about Big Brother . . . but when you actually look at the details, I think we’ve struck the right balance.”

How many records did the NSA seize from Verizon? Hundreds of millions. We are now learning about more potential mass data collections by the government from other communications and online companies. These are the “details,” and few Americans consider this approach “balanced,” though many rightly consider it Orwellian.

These activities violate the Fourth Amendment, which says warrants must be specific—”particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” And what is the government doing with these records? The president assures us that the government is simply monitoring the origin and length of phone calls, not eavesdropping on their contents. Is this administration seriously asking us to trust the same government that admittedly targets political dissidents through the Internal Revenue Service and journalists through the Justice Department?

…Monitoring the records of as many as a billion phone calls, as some news reports have suggested, is no modest invasion of privacy. It is an extraordinary invasion of privacy. We fought a revolution over issues like generalized warrants, where soldiers would go from house to house, searching anything they liked. Our lives are now so digitized that the government going from computer to computer or phone to phone is the modern equivalent of the same type of tyranny that our Founders rebelled against.

Read more from this story HERE.

Paul Wants to Lead Supreme Court Challenge to Fed’s Tracking of Americans’ Calls, Emails (+video)

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Photo Credit: Fox News

Sen. Rand Paul said Sunday he wants to mount a Supreme Court challenge to the federal government logging Americans’ phone calls and Internet activities.

Paul, R-Ky., a leading voice in the Libertarian movement, told “Fox News Sunday” he wants to get enough signatures to file a class-action lawsuit before the high court and will appeal to younger Americans, who appear to be advancing the cause of less government and civil liberties.

“I’m going to be asking all the Internet providers and all of the phone companies: Ask your customers to join me in a class-action lawsuit,” he said. “If we get 10 million Americans saying we don’t want our phone records looked at, then maybe someone will wake up and something will change in Washington.”

Paul, a first-term senator and potential 2016 Republican presidential candidate, said he disagrees with President Obama’s argument that the National Security Agency collecting 3 billion calls daily and other information is a modest invasion of privacy.

“That doesn’t look like a modest invasion of privacy,” he told Fox. “I have no problem if you have probable cause … but we’re talking about trolling through a billion phone records a day.”

Read more from this story HERE.

GOP Divide Between Senators Paul and McCain Over Syria Grow Deeper

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Photo Credit: AP/REUTERS

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul and Arizona Sen. John McCain are once again banging heads – this time over whether to arm Syrian rebels – in the latest dispute that underscores a divide in the GOP and intensifies the fight over what the party will represent in 2016 and beyond.

Paul, a first-term senator and Tea Party favorite surging in popularity, took the latest shot by opposing aid to the rebels – a key part of McCain’s plan to end the two-year Syrian civil war in which 70,000 civilians and others have been killed.

“It is very clear that any attempt to aid the Syrian rebels would be complicated and dangerous, precisely because we don’t know who these people are,” Paul wrote in an opinion piece earlier this week. “The situation in Syria is certainly dire. … Al Qaeda is making confirmed inroads into the country. No one wants to see Syria become a bastion of extremism. But like other American interventions in the past, U.S. involvement could actually help the extremists.”

But McCain, fresh off a secret trip to Syria, on Friday upped his call for intervention — telling the Associated Press the opposition needs heavy weapons.

Read more from this story HERE.

Rand Paul: Obama ‘Losing Moral Authority’

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Photo Credit: Getty Images President Barack Obama is in danger of losing his moral authority to lead the nation, Rep. Rand Paul, R-Ky., says.

Appearing on ABC’s “This Week,” Paul said the three controversies currently swirling around the administration weaken his leadership ability.

“Nobody questions his legal authority, but I think he’s really losing the moral authority,” Paul said. “I don’t care whether you’re a Republican or Democrat, nobody likes to see the opposite party punishing you for your political beliefs.”

Paul was referring to IRS agents targeting conservative groups for additional scrutiny when they applied for tax-exempt status prior the previous election cycle. Some have charged that agents wanted to suppress Republican voter turnout, though administration officials say the agents simply used bad judgment.

Asked whether he was aware of anyone at the IRS breaking the law, Paul responded that he didn’t know. But he noted that Lois Lerner, the head of tax-exempt organizations at the agency, took her Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate herself when asked to testify before Congress last week.

Read more from this story HERE.

Rand Paul: Obama “Drunk on Power” (+video)

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Photo Credit: YouTubeSenator Rand Paul hits a home run in this interview with Sean Hannity last night. Sen. Paul describes Obama’s presidency as “failing.” He also says that the President is “drunk with power.”

Hannity also asks about Paul’s presidential ambitions and discusses the broadening Internal Revenue Service scandal.