Rand Paul Quotes
No American should be killed by a drone on American soil without first being charged with a crime, without first being found guilty of a crime by a court.
Paul, Rand. "Filibuster of John Brennan's Nomination." Congressional Record, vol. 159, no. 32, 6 Mar. 2013, p. S1246.
Roman law shaped European law for centuries. Even in the most dictatorial regimes of monarchies usually felt an obligation to avoid summary execution and have a trial, even if a crude, trumped up one involving torture of the accused. This Roman law had a long and profound influence.
Note the use of the phrase “against the government.” One of the unique aspects of the American Constitution and The Bill of Rights is that the government is considered a potential and even probable infringer on the liberties of the people. It is almost as though the government was the potential enemy. Modern libertarians state this very explicitly and it is ever present in the views of both the right and left wings of American politics. Most centrists recoil at the thought that some citizens see the government as the enemy, but even in America there have been times where the government has infringed on the rights of citizens only to have the courts or future administrations and Congresses correct the error.
Kahn had been arrested during the War on Terrorism and then released without any charges being filed.
See {42210}, {626788}, {626784}. Palmer had been a potential Presidential candidate until his excesses ended that possibility.
In the aftermath of 9-11, there was a call for giving the law enforcement agencies more authority and the Patriot Act was passed in haste and fear. Some law enforcement personnel then went about picking up Arab Americans and in many cases holding them incommunicado without any charges. No terrorists were discovered by this process and yet good American citizens were abused, traumatized and insulted. In our zeal to protect American freedom, we actually began to resemble some of the capricious and abusive practices of our undemocratic enemies. There were other abuses allowed under the Patriot Act, but at the time of this writing the extent had not yet been revealed, but the refusal of the authorities to make public the national security benefits suggests that there was not much national security benefit and much abuse.
In addition to creating many protests from the public, the Bush administration was reprimanded by the Supreme Court which stated that the detention of an American Citizen as an enemy combatant. The administration must charge and try such an American for treason, assault, conspiracy or whatever crimes the facts substantiate. The administration could not just hold a citizen without due judicial processes. They certainly could not detain a citizen and then secretly or openly execute him/her without a trial, conviction, and sentence with all appeals exhausted.
The choice is usually contrasted between guilty persons going free, rather an innocent one be adjudicated guilty. But here the justice tells us that the avoidance of an innocent person being subject to easy arrest is important enough to have a system where guilty people sometimes escape justice.
Randal Howard Paul is an American physician and politician serving as the junior United States Senator from Kentucky since 2011. He is the son of former three-time presidential candidate and twelve-term U.S. Representative of Texas, Ron Paul.
