NEW YORK magazine blog commenter on Rand Paul's anti-drone filibuster.

RegisMayhem

I can't believe I'm about to type this, but I'm with Rand Paul on this one. I don't understand why more people aren't skeeved out about the administration's inability to unequivocally state that drone strikes won't be used on U.S. soil against U.S. citizens? At the risk of sounding like a paranoid nutjob, I know that it's naive to think that any of us aren't under greater surveillance and scrutiny than we realize and that the system isn't stacked against all but the wealthiest and most powerful among us, but still... I find cold comfort in people like Eric Holder saying that he really, truly, almost definitely, probably, maybe won't plunk you into oblivion with an RC model plane with a missile attached. So yeah, if I have to align myself with the Junior Whackjob from the State of Kentucky once in a while, so be it.

Re the John Brennan confirmation hearings.

Excerpted from Robert Dreyfuss's live blog of John Brennan's CIA confirmation hearings in THE NATION:

4:20 pm: Maybe I've missed something, though i don't think so, but so far the senators haven't bothered to ask Brennan any of the tough questions suggested by, among others, The Nation, the New York Review of Books, and many others. It's as if the "kill list," the president's authority to order drone assassinations, the legal authority on which it's based, the efficacy of using drones all over the world, etc., aren't worth worrying about. The Republicans are obsessed with asking Brennan about "leaks" -- as Dan Coats (R.-Ind.) is doing now -- and the Democrats are obsessed with the malfeasance of the CIA in the George W. Bush administration. Senator Levin (D.-Mich.) went back to 2002, when the CIA have credence to Cheney's nonsense about secret meetings between Iraqi offiials and Mohammad Atta of the 9/11 Al Qaeda team.