Kentucky Senator Rand Paul is urging Iowa Republicans to consider the people who support his father’s bid for president as friends rather than “enemies.”
“They’re not people with two heads. Some of them are new to the party. Some of them have been in the party a long time. Some of them may have beat your friend for a party position and you don’t like it, but we’re all in this together,” Paul said early this evening in suburban Des Moines. “And the one thing that my dad, I think, has done is helped the party. He’s brought new people into the party.”
Texas Congressman Ron Paul, his father, finished third in Iowa’s Caucuses this past January and the congressman’s supporters now occupy key positions within the Iowa Republican Party leadership. In addition, it appears Paul supporters will occupy most of the slots in the Iowa Republican Party’s delegation at the national convention this summer.
“Sometimes people don’t recognize the good for wanting to dwell on the bad…We are on the same side of a lot of the issues,” Paul said. “…There’s more registered Republicans (in Iowa) than at any time in the past six years and I think that’s an important point. The new people aren’t hurting the party. They’re helping to grow the party.”
Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul has agreed to speak at the American Conservative Union’s regional Conservative Political Action Conference in Chicago on June 8, Yahoo News has learned.
Paul, the son of three-time presidential candidate Ron Paul, will join New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and former Republican presidential candidates Rick Santorum and Michele Bachmann at the day-long conference.
Elected in 2010 with robust support from the tea party, Paul represents the libertarian-leaning wing of the movement.
WASHINGTON — Presidents of both parties, over the past several decades, have shown a willingness to interpret Senate resolutions in the broadest imaginable way when it comes to war, whether it’s to launch a 10-year land-war in Southeast Asia or Afghanistan, to torture detainees picked up in foreign countries or to eavesdrop without a warrant on American citizens.
This time around, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) wants to make sure there are no misunderstandings.
The Senate is debating legislation that would impose strict sanctions on Iran, including penalizing U.S. companies whose subsidiaries have ties to the country.
The bill, S. Res. 380, would not explicitly allow war with Iran. But Paul, who has been a critic of U.S. involvement in both Iraq and Afghanistan, doesn’t want to take any chances. His amendment would make clear that nothing in the bill “shall be construed as a declaration of war or an authorization of use of force against Iran or Syria.”
Republican Senate candidate Don Stenberg on Monday won the endorsement of tea party conservative Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, who described Stenberg as “the true conservative” in Nebraska’s Senate race.
“Conservatives in the Senate need reinforcements,” Paul said, “and that is why we need Don Stenberg to serve with us.
“Many candidates say the right things when they are campaigning for office, yet very few actually mean it. Don is different.”
Stenberg has demonstrated his conservative commitment by supporting Paul’s plan to balance the federal budget within five years, the Kentucky senator said.
Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, son of Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul, is endorsing Connie Mack for U.S. Senate in the Republican race. The press release:
MIAMI – Congressman today received another key conservative endorsement in his race for the United States Senate, this time from conservative Senate stalwart Rand Paul (R-KY).
Paul, one of the nation’s leading TEA Party leaders and champion of freedom from government stated:
“I’ve had the opportunity to work first-hand with Connie Mack. He is a passionate defender and a tireless advocate for the ideals of less taxing, less spending, less government and more freedom.
“From standing against the Bush Administration on TARP and fighting against President Obama’s failed stimulus, to his introduction of the Penny Plan, which I strongly support, Connie Mack has proven time and again that he is a staunch conservative and the very type of principled leader that we need in the United States Senate.
“Winning the Florida Senate seat for conservatives means the defeat of Harry Reid and all of us need to rally around Connie for the sake of our country. We need Connie Mack in the U.S. Senate.”
Mack said:
“Senator Rand Paul was one of the earliest supporters of the Mack Penny Pan to balance the budget in five years and I’m honored to have earned his support in our fight for freedom against Bill Nelson. His fight for our shared goal of less government and more freedom in the U.S Senate has made him one of our nation’s most important conservative leaders.
“I look forward to working closely with Senator Paul in the United States to bring this country back to its founding principles, back to what makes America great and back to the road to prosperity.”
WASHINGTON, D.C – Today, Sen. Rand Paul testified at the U.S. House of Representatives Natural Resources Subcommittee on Fisheries, Wildlife, Oceans and Insular Affairs Subcommittee hearing regarding the Freedom from Over-Criminalization and Unjust Seizures Act of 2012 – or FOCUS Act, which was introduced in the House by Rep. Paul Broun (R-Ga.). Earlier this year, Sen. Paul introduced the FOCUS Act in the Senate. This legislation aims to amend the Lacey Act, a law that currently allows the federal government to apply foreign law to American citizens and businesses. Below is the video and transcript of the hearing.
TRANSCRIPT:
Thank you Chairman Fleming, and thank you for inviting me over here to talk about this important issue.
When I first heard about the raid at Gibson Guitars I was appalled that this could happen in the United States of America; That we would send in federal agents from Fish and Wildlife [Services] with automatic weapons to invade a company that hires 2,800 people around our country.
These are law-abiding people that are making guitars. There are no grizzly bears in downtown Nashville or in Gibson Guitar that we need to be concerned with. I was aghast when I learned that what they were accused of was not breaking a U.S. law. They were accused of breaking a foreign law.
The more we looked into this, I was then incensed to find out that the foreign law they were accused of breaking has nothing to do with conservation, has nothing to do with the rainforest. That all that hyperbole about rainforest and conservation has nothing to do with the issue here.
They’re accused of breaking an Indian labor law. This is a law that says the wood has to be finished in India. The same wood can come here, they just want the jobs over in India and not over here. They have actually said, in their legal pleadings, that if Gibson Guitar would finish the wood over there they won’t be in violation.
So if we send the jobs we have in Nashville over to India everything is fine? This is ridiculous. I could not believe we have a law on our books saying we have to obey all foreign laws. How could that possibly be an American law and how could that possibly be constitutional. Not just all past foreign laws, we’ve agreed to obey all future foreign laws.
There was a case a few years ago of two fisherman off the coast of Florida – Abner Schoenwetter and David McNab. They got six years in prison for breaking a law that wasn’t a U.S. law, but for breaking a Honduran fishing regulation.
There’s something from the tradition of due process that you have to have fair notice and it comes out of our common-law tradition. How are you supposed to have fair notice of a Honduran law? What if you don’t speak Spanish? What if you don’t speak Mandarin and its Chinese fishing regulation?
We’re expected to obey all the laws of the entire world? It really smacks at our sovereignty and smacks at the concept that we create the laws in our country and that we’re of any importance here, than we’re going agree to accept all past and future laws of foreign countries?
So I think really this is something that is long overdue and it really grieves me that we put two people in jail for six years for breaking laws of a foreign country. And in their case, the Honduran government actually came and testified on their behalf and said they hadn’t broken the laws.
One of the laws that they were accused of breaking was that the fish were not in cardboard, they were in plastic. You know to put someone in jail for that – you can be put in jail a year for each one of these misdemeanor crimes. What if you brought in 30,000 lobsters and they found 10,000, you could get 10,000 years in prison.
It is out of control, it’s outrageous, and we need to do something to stop it. Really you need to say look, if we’re in favor of the environment, and I am, and you want to protect against illegal logging or protect certain species, if you don’t people cutting off the horns of a rhinoceros and importing it; make a law, that’s what were here for.
Make the law, but then it would be a U.S. law, but don’t say that we’re going to accept all the laws in Kenya or that we’re going to accept all the laws of South Africa. That is absurd on its face, its Pandora’s box, we’ve gone too far. There now are forty-five hundred federal crimes; the Constitution only authorizes us to deal with four crimes: treason, counterfeiting, and a couple of other crimes, laws against nations.
But it doesn’t authorize us to be involved in all of this. We can have some restrictions on importation, but I see no reason to have criminal penalties. Our bill is very simple; we get rid of all reference to obeying foreign laws, which doesn’t do anything to the Lacey Act. You still have restrictions in the Lacey Act and if you need more, pass them.
But don’t obey foreign laws and it says we should have civil penalties, not criminal penalties. I don’t think we should be putting Americans in jail for this. Thank you Mr. Chairman, I yield back my time.
Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul is throwing his support to Greg Sowards, the underdog in New Mexico’s GOP Senate primary against former Rep. Heather Wilson, the establishment choice.
In a statement being released Wednesday afternoon, Paul said: “Greg supports dramatically shrinking government. Greg supports the 5-year balanced budget proposed by myself and Senators [Jim] DeMint and [Mike] Lee. He agrees that our future generations of Americans do not deserve to be enslaved by debt, and we need more champions like him in the U.S. Senate.”
Himself a darling of the Tea Party, which propelled him to victory in 2010, Paul asked for the movement’s activists, along with libertarians and fellow conservatives, to show their support for Sowards.
Kentucky Senator Rand Paul is urging Iowa Republicans to consider the people who support his father’s bid for president as friends rather than “enemies.”
Republican Senate candidate Don Stenberg on Monday won the endorsement of tea party conservative Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, who described Stenberg as “the true conservative” in Nebraska’s Senate race.