Good morning, happy campers! Let’s suit up and spin the wheel on that airlock, shall we?
Oh – Typepad’s been sending my comments to spam hell (which is funny, since I’m using the same email in comments that I use to log into Typepad), but be assured – I read every comment like a first-time Hot 100 artist reads their fan mail. Now – to business!
In this shrinking sphere of people-the-Freeperati-can-still-trust, none stand taller than their boy Ted Cruz. They’ve even been gabbling about a Presidential run, for crying out loud.
Now – they’re just crying out loud.
Ted Cruz: Let’s not rush to judgment on NSA surveillance
Hotair ^
| 06/17/2013
| AllahPundit
Posted on Monday, June 17, 2013 2:57:42 PM by SeekAndFind
Via the Examiner,
a short but noteworthy clip insofar as it exposes a potential fault
line between Cruz and Rand Paul. McCain lumps them together as “wacko
birds” but I’m not so sure that’s true of Cruz on national-security
issues. His alliance with Paul interests me because it strikes me as a
personification of the uneasy libertarian/tea-party alliance. The groups
overlap heavily on spending issues, and both are deeply suspicious of
Obama’s expansion of government. The master stroke of Paul’s drone
filibuster was that he found a sweet spot for both, making the
philosophical case for due process while humiliating O for having turned
into such a hypocrite about it. Even so, no matter how much Paul
sometimes likes to pretend that the tea party is synonymous with
libertarianism (for his own strategic reasons), various polls show that
it just isn’t so. Tea partiers are more socially conservative than
doctrinaire libertarians, they’re more likely to support entitlements,
and they’re more traditionally Republican on defense/security issues.
That’s not to say that they’re not becoming more libertarian —polls
lately show Republicans are more skeptical about NSA surveillance than
Democrats are, although that’s probably for partisan reasons — but
they’re not all Ron Paul fans either. That’s why Rand is usually quick
to claim the tea-party label. The more he gets TPers thinking of
themselves as allied with him, then theoretically the more receptive
they’ll be to his libertarian ideals.McCain doesn’t seem to
understand the difference between them but comparing Paul’s reaction to
the NSA revelations to Cruz’s is instructive. Paul’s first instinct was
to organize a class-action lawsuit and accuse the NSA of an “extraordinary invasion of [Americans’] privacy.”
Cruz, by contrast, says the revelations are “cause for concern” but
urges Fox viewers to reserve judgment until we know more about the
programs. And from the looks of it here, his chief objection seems to be
that this particular administration can’t be trusted with NSA’s
surveillance tools in light of the IRS scandal, not necessarily that any
administration can’t be trusted with it. He may very well end up
joining Paul’s lawsuit, but I suspect that’ll be aimed at impressing
libertarians whose votes he’ll need if he ends up running for president
someday just as Rand often tempers his own libertarianism in order to
impress more mainstream tea-party conservatives. Cruz’s ally, Sarah
Palin (who returned to Fox this morning, although she doesn’t speak in
this clip) seems to be taking a position similar to his lately. From her
speech at the Faith and Freedom Conference on Saturday:(snip some Palin crap)
I suspect Cruz would agree with every word, and that her former
running mate would disagree with most or all of it. (Palin advocated
“Cruz control” for Washington in the speech, in fact.) She doesn’t want
any more interventions under a strategist as poor as Obama — but she’s
not against intervention in principle. She wants America to listen more
to the libertarians, but when it comes to the lousy Gang of Eight bill,
she rightly opposes it for its weak border security — even though
libertarians are famously comfortable with weak borders. None of this is
contradictory; most tea partiers would, I take it, agree that America
needs more libertarianism while maybe not quite so much as Ron Paul
supporters would prefer. The point is, though, there are real
differences between Cruz and Rand Paul and I think we’re getting a hint
of one in the clip. And the longer the national debate stays stuck on
liberty-versus-security issues, the more obvious I think those
differences will be.
To: SeekAndFindWell, Ted just lost my support: the NSA surveillance is a clear,
blatant violation of the 4th, 5th, and very-arguably 6th amendments —
this is, of course, not taking into acount that the system could easily be used to blackmail and is just begging to be abused in Ex Post Facto law. (If the 4th, 5th, and 6th don’t protect you, why should the Ex Post Facto law prohibition?)5
posted on Monday, June 17, 2013 3:08:18 PM
by OneWingedShark
(Q: Why am I here? A: To do Justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with my God.)
.
To: SeekAndFindThe gov spies on us and not the terrorists and we aren’t supposed to have an opinion, Ted?
To: SeekAndFindA Cruz statement from The Blaze last week:
“If it is the case that the federal government is seizing millions of
personal records about law-abiding citizens, and if it is the case that
there are minimal restrictions on accessing or reviewing those records,
then I think Mr. Snowden has done a considerable public service by
bringing it to light.”What happened?
.
To: laplata“What happened?”
The Obama Administration showed Ted Cruz what they got on him. That’s what.
To: SeekAndFindI wonder what they got on Cruz.
.
In a flash our favorite three becomes our favorite two. Sarah and Rand breath a sigh of relief. As the bus passes we catch our last glimpse of Ted, neatly positioned under the speeding bus
So … who pushed Ted under the bus? Sarah or Rand? Don’t leave us hanging here, we have to know!
“In a state of disbelief as to how liberals destroyed America in a mere 40 years.”
They never seem to recognize the cognitive dissonance of believing that liberals are both:
1.) Insane, stupid, gullible, fact resistant, immoral, godless moochers with an incorrect and unsustainable view of government and society.
2.) Winning
The Bushies packed the Supremes so carefully.
There’s a bit of a giveaway.
.