A quick rant

I don't agree with Rand Paul on much, but I'd be remiss not to thank him for doing a little battle against the never-ending war against "Al Qaeda" we are fighting with drones.  I put "Al Qaeda" in quotes because it deserves to be.  The entity that attacked us on 9/11 is pretty much out of business.  The other organizations that call themselves Al Qaeda this or that are not Al Qaeda, no more than someone else can call themselves a Bilmes or a Joshua or a Joshua Bilmes and not be me.  And even though I am not in favor of any of these organizations attacking us or for that matter attacking other people, including other Muslims, which they do as or more often as attacking us, I am in favor of the rule of law.  Targeted assassinations against targets determined behind closed doors under a program with no oversight, no accountability, no nothing, with the administration not even willing to entirely preclude carrying out attacks like this as opposed to arrest and trial even when they can do so -- those aren't the rule of law.  And as people who read this blog know, I wish that libertarians and especially gun nut libertarians would stop fixating all their attention on the 2nd amendment when we are doing far worse violence against multiple other amendments that are as or more important in the name of some undefinable never-ending impossible-to-ever-have-an-ending war on terrorism that has been going strong for almost 11.5 years.

So, yes, please, let's get on John Brennan and Eric Holder and the Obama administration just a wee bit on all of this.