Rand Paul calls out Jeb Bush for defending NSA
Rand Paul calls out Jeb Bush for defending NSA
By KATIE GLUECK 6/3/15 4:46 PM EDT
Rand Paul is slamming Jeb Bush over the former Florida governor’s defense of National Security Agency data collection, the latest round in the Kentucky senator’s battles with his own party on the issue.
“Just like he was confused for weeks about his position on the Iraq war, Gov. Bush appears completely unaware of the facts about the government’s illegal and unnecessary spying [on] the American people and made it clear his position is based on politics, not policy and the Constitution,” Paul spokesman Sergio Gor said in a statement on Wednesday, jabbing a likely 2016 rival over Bush’s previous equivocating about whether he would have invaded Iraq given the intelligence available now.
The Paul presidential campaign’s pushback follows an interview Bush gave to Fox News a day earlier, when Bush said that most of the criticism of the NSA stems from Democrats. His comments come after a heated debate in Congress over the reauthorization of the PATRIOT Act, during which Paul raised strenuous objections about data collection allowed under the law.
“While Rand Paul and a few others have expressed concerns about civil liberties — and I respect that although I don’t see any shred of evidence that anybody’s civil liberties are being violated — the great preponderance of people that want to overturn the Patriot Act are on the left,” Bush said on Fox, when asked whether there was a divide between the “Rand Paul wing and pretty much everyone else.” Bush continued, “And we need to … give people some room in the Democratic Party to be strong supporters of defending the homeland again. I think we need to restore a bipartisan consensus on this. The great majority of Republicans are supportive of the NSA.”
Read more:
http://www.politico.com/story/2015/06/rand-paul-criticizes-jeb-bush-nsa-spying-iraq-war-118597.html#ixzz3c2EZtNNF
Kind of fun watching Rand piss off the rest of the GOP...
