Mr. Smith would have been proud.

Twelve hours of shining a light on what could be a very troubling expansion of presidential power, or the worrisome continued downward spiral of the rights of the American people in the name of “fighting terrorism” is exactly the reason for the filibuster and standing up to be counted is what all our elected officials should do.

So, what are the results of this bold and show stopping move?

Sen. Paul got his answer.  There was a simple question that motivated Sen. Paul’s filibuster, “Does the President have the authority to use a weaponized drone to kill an American not engaged in combat on American soil?”  This question came out of ongoing debate about the use of drones overseas in the killing of terror suspects, even American citizens.  Sen. Paul was concerned, as we all should have been, with the answer Att. Gen. Holder originally provided that appeared to leave the door open a crack for the president, whoever he/she might be to authorize the killing of an American citizen on American soil without the benefit of due process.  Unless that American was providing a imminent threat to the life of other Americans, due process MUST be followed and Sen. Paul was right to object to the vagueness of Att. Gen. Holder’s response.  Holder sent the Senator a letter with a simple, clear and precise answer: NO.  I would like to see President Obama hold a news conference where he apologizes for the vagueness of the original answer and then issue a clear declaration that no US president has the right to kill US citizens on American soil who are not an imminent threat to other lives.  At that same news conference ,President Obama should urge Congress to support Sen. Paul and Sen Cruz’s new legislation that reaffirms this fundamental principle.

Sen Graham doesn’t get it again.  South Carolina’s now senior senator has been a lead warrior in the fight against terrorism and in supporting our troops, but once again, he fails to see that we can uphold the Constitution and still defeat the enemy.  Last year, Sen. Graham in defense of the NDAA 2012 bill that included language allowing for the indefinite detention of Americans without benefit of trial was clear on where he stood:

So it is no surprise that he was on the wrong side in this drone debate. Sen. Graham said, “I don’t worry about [drones killing Americans],Here’s what I worry about: that al-Qaeda has killed 2,958 of us and is going to add to the total if we let our guard down. And I will do everything in my power to protect this president — who I disagree with a lot — and future presidents in having an ill-informed Congress take over the legitimate authority under the Constitution and the laws of this land to be the Commander in Chief on behalf of all of us.” In both of these examples, Sen. Graham misses the point because, in my opinion, he sees the war on terror and can not see what the rest of us are concerned about: the eroding of our rights in the name of security. Sen. Graham needs to take a break from being the good soldier fighting the “Huns at our door” and spend sometime upholding his oath to protect the Constitution.

Sen Paul has arrived. One of the results of this filibuster is that Sen. Paul has reached superstar status. Those who supported him before have now elevated him to the level of “incapable of doing no wrong,” and “He was right about this, so he is right on everything else.” I am glad his supporters are ecstatic, but he is still fallible. He also has won new converts, folks who are giving libertarianism a second look. One final sign of his “having arrived” was evident in Sen. Graham’s response, the Republican party has issues.

Finally, We, the People won a battle. Any time the Constitution is reaffirmed in the halls of Congress or on Pennsylvania Ave, we win.

So thanks, Sen. Paul.

After months of watching Gov. Romney battle his GOP contenders through a never ending series of debates, we finally get to see the real deal, President Obama vs Gov. Romney. So did the battle live up to our expectations? Did we learn anything new? What did the fact checking reveal?
We answer all these questions today.

We examined the Supreme Court’s ruling on the AZ illegal immigration law opposed by the federal government.

We also tackled President Obama’s controversial policy change on not deporting children of illegal immigrants.

Finally, we took exception with Gov. Haley’s veto of a bill providing free vaccines for HPV which can result in cervical cancer.

We started the show talking about President Obama’s State of the Union.  Both Jason and Eric felt that this was one of President Obama’s best speeches in years.  Eric was glad to see the President come out swinging, taking credit for the accomplishments he is proud to have achieved during his time in office.  Jason reminded everyone that President Obama’s recap of how we got to our current economic situation was not merely the “blame game,” shifting attention away from himself and back on President Bush.  While we all know what happened, we often forget and with the narrative of those opposing the President conveniently leaving out the loss of over 4 million jobs prior to President Obama taking office and with the current crop of contenders for the White House advocating some of the various policies that were contributing factors in the economic collapse, there is a need for the facts to be brought out again.

Eric also stressed the need for honesty in debate and praised the President for pointing out that the bailout of the auto industry was a success.  There is room to debate the constitutionality of the federal government bailing out private institutions, but there is no room for denying that it worked.

Jason and Eric applauded the President’s call to  turn our unemployment system into a re-employment system by additional job retraining and partnerships between colleges and businesses aided by the government to make this happen.  Jason advocates for letting the menial and low paying jobs leave America, as long as higher pay and high tech jobs replace them.  Eric and Jason agree that we should be educating people not just to get a job but to be well educated and be able to take any job they wish, but Eric does not want to see any job, no matter how menial to go anywhere.  He just wants to see folks get paid for whatever job they do.

Brandon marked the 1 year anniversary of Ramble On with a Ramble about things he hates when it comes to politics, including people who don’t vote because… and people who once didn’t vote turning into the smug political activist.  He really nailed it with the piece.

After Ramble On, we turned our attention our attention briefly to Governor Haley’s State of the State address.  The unanimous opinion was that it was uninspiring and sounded more like Gov. Haley worked for the business community and just lived in the Governor’s mansion.  We were disappointed with the glaring absence of proposals to fix our struggling education system, outside of sending more money to Charter schools and decentralizing the school busing system.  We will not be able to continue attracting great companies, it we continue to turn out uneducated graduates.

Finally, Eric urged Gov. Haley and all our politicians to stop weaving stories about issues that fit their narratives better than they do the actual facts, pointing to her account of what happened with Boeing and the NLRB.  We must have honesty even if it does not make the point we want.

Since we know what we’re getting from Barack Obama; fascism, socialism, freeloading, Muslim, secular, scientific, Atheistic, Anti-Christ, and a few others that I left out. Although the candidates are out in force maybe it’s time that we let them know WHAT we’re looking for instead of choosing those that they’ve given us. I mean, who goes for the default set-up over a custom job anyway? So here are six items that I think that our next President, whether he is Republican or one of those “snowball’s chance in hell” parties, should possess. Remember, these are things that I am looking for but feel free to email in some things that YOU would want but I basically cover it all because of my drunken insight.

1. Possess Some Amazing Pre-Presidential Credentials:

Andrew Jackson was quite possibly the best at this. Before he entered the Office of President of the United States he had bagged himself quite a reputation. He was an Indian fighter, Revolutionary War veteran, Hero of the War of 1812, annexed Florida, served in the U.S. Senate, and served on the Tennessee Supreme Court. He also fought in thirteen DOCUMENTED duels. Unofficially, he may have fought in over one hundred. Yeah, he did all of that before he became the President. All of this will also help us in our next category…

2. Have a Few Bad Ass Points:

Yes, Andrew Jackson was a man-bear hybrid but Teddy Roosevelt was such a bear of a man that all bear based toys are required by law to be named after him. [Citation Needed] Teddy Roosevelt was a soldier, hunter, hiker, and politician. He gets credit for when he was traveling to give a speech for the 1912 Presidential election for the Bull Moose Party. Wow, he was also part bull and moose! While en route to the speech he was ambushed and shot by an assassin who obviously did not know that Teddy was only vulnerable to WMDs. Roosevelt was saved by his speech which was fifty pages long and folded over and held under his jacket. His speech was so thick that it helped slow the bullet down enough so that the shot was only a minor wound. Roosevelt, bleeding out from his wound, still went on to give his speech BEFORE he sought medical treatment. Our more recent Presidents are almost killed by snack foods. Yeah, maybe we do need to look into this one for at least our esteem.

3. Do Not Think Being Highly Educated Equals Instant Success:

George Washington and Abraham Lincoln are, without a doubt, the most widely recognized and highly thought of Presidents. One ground Red Coat skulls into dust and the other one fought vampires while winning the Civil War. If you don’t believe me you can just read Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter and send me an apology. Another thing that these men share is the fact that neither received any kind of high formal education. Washington was a military man, land surveyor, and planter who received very little formal education and no form of university education. Lincoln’s formal education totaled at 18 months and the rest he taught himself. Sure we can say that Washington became President because of his military service and his patriotic actions throughout the creation of the nation but Lincoln is a different story. He taught himself all that he would know to be a member of Congress, a lawyer, and eventually President without all the laurels and certificates that are thrown our way these days.

4. Sense of Realism:

This is actually something that I think we all, as a nation, could do with a healthy dosing of. We all fall for campaign promises and slogans and that sucks but it is understandable. We get caught up in the pageantry and sometimes we overlook the fact that these people are, essentially, doing all of this because without us they’d only be successful business people and not successful business people who dabble in politics. The President of the United States should be grounded. I mean super grounded. An electrician should approve of a President before they are able to ascend to the Oval Office.

That’s something that I want from our President. I don’t want someone spending their tenure in the White House trying to keep everyone content and reelect them. Be honest. It sucks and you won’t win the popularity vote that you want but that is not your job. YOUR job is to help run the country and let us know what’s going on. We do not live in a picture perfect world so do not try to frame the world in such a way. Times are tough and we want to know how tough so we can be ready for it and plan according to it. Transparency in government, not the phrase that politicians use, means letting us know everything that we need to know about. If we are all going to go through a rough patch let us know so I can stop buying caviar and save up for corn dogs. Sweet delicious corndogs.

Along with this means honesty. Your mother did tell you that it was the best policy and in politics it is nothing but dealing with policy after policy. That means that you are going to need to put your laundry out on display because we’re going to digging for it anyway. Being honest goes along with our next section…

5. Have Some Source of Morality to Avoid Embarrassing Our Country:

Yep, you knew that this was coming. You’re now President of the United States of America. You have become the leader of the free world and all the jazz that goes along with that. You will have the eyes of the world upon you. All of this means that every time you say, “Um…” in a speech it will be analyzed and determined as a sign of weakness and the downfall of our country. We do not need it to come out that you were doing something even worse than that.

As I mentioned earlier George Bush almost choked to death on a pretzel which the Secret Service I’m sure would have helped sooner if they had regained their composure from laughing so hard quicker. We still remember Bill Clinton but not because of any of the real political activities that he was a part of. Bill Clinton is still in our public memory because he “reenacted” some of the “activities” that John F. Kennedy did in office. Let’s look at Kennedy, we remember him for being one of the most laid Presidents in American History. And Jimmy Carter was President and that’s embarrassing all on its own but that’s mostly our fault. Mostly.

6. Manly Facial Hair:

Finally, we come to a more cosmetic change I would like to see in candidates: facial hair. Burly, manly, I’ll make him an offer he can’t refuse facial hair. Abe Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, Teddy Roosevelt, and even William Taft had some fur covering their face. I mean, if you were going to take someone with you into a bar fight would it be Mitt Romney or Teddy Roosevelt? In a street fight are you betting on Jimmy Carter or Ulysses S. Grant? That’s actually a trick question because everyone knows that you should never bet on Jimmy Carter. That’s not to say that the clean cut guy is not dangerous in their own right but they just don’t look the part. I guess that their legislation can be worded in a manly way or at least written in some wicked cool penmanship.

(Note: It is a well-known fact that Andrew Jackson’s moustache was killed in a duel. [Citation needed])

In our discussion of this evil man’s demise, we looked at who deserves the credit for ending his personal reign of terror.  Jason’s post earlier details our thoughts on credit.  We also debunked the notion that our current president is soft on fighting terrorism.

Finally, we mentioned a thing or two about what happens now, with the largest head of the Hydra has been lopped off.  We both agreed that the future still involves intelligence gathering and military action, but following our president’s lead on engaging the youth and encouraging democracy in Muslim countries is vital as well  We look with hope at the hundreds of thousands of young men and women across the Middle East embracing freedom and democratic rule rather than strapping bombs to their chest.

Saturday also found us evaluating the very first Presidential debate of the 2012 campaign.  Sure, it arrived almost a year and a half before the election and a number of potential candidates did not show (to their harm, we believe), but the debate provide voters with usual information about candidates that they might not have been as familiar with.

It was especially nice to see the national spotlight shining on South Carolina with a positive hue.  Greenville really was the star from the media and candidates point of view and we could not have been prouder.

Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, former Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota, former Gov. Gary Johnson of New Mexico and former Godfather’s pizza owner spent an hour an a half letting voters get to know them.  The debate felt less like a debate and more like a forum for candidates to lay out their platform with the aid of the media moderators.

While all the candidates participating had much in common, clear lines of distinction became apparent.

Rep. Paul and former Gov. Johnson vied for the Libertarian-minded South Carolinian, with Rep. Paul bringing a strong base into the debate and Gov Johnson adding a business-type approach to his brand of Libertarianism.

Former Sen. Santorum clearly owned the social conservative corner of the crowd, stating in response to a quote from Sen. Mitch McConnell on the need for compromise on social issues to ensure a Republican victory, “Anyone that would suggest that we “call a truce on the moral issues” doesn’t understand what America is all about.”

Businessman Herman Cain actually emerged the victor according to a Fox News focus group in Charleston due to his executive experience and his emphasis on problem solving skills honed in his years as a business owner.

Former Gov. Pawlenty positioned himself as an outsider with strong conservative credentials and a good vision for our country.

On the show Saturday, we ran out of time before we could complete our look at the candidates’ views on some economic and social areas and in future posts, we’ll expand out what we thought.

Let us know your opinion on the debate or the death of Osama bin Laden.