Summary: On Wednesday, Senator Rand Paul took to the Senate chamber to filibuster the nomination of John Brennan as director of the CIA. The Senator used the maneuver to bring attention to the domestic drone program, and to receive a firm answer about whether the administration feels it has the authority to kill US citizens in America without due process of law. As you might expect, Sen. Paul used the time to raise many issues about US foreign and anti-terrorism policies. I attempted to sift through the nearly thirteen hours of audio to post the most compelling, insightful remarks from the rhetorical marathon. I had initially considered posting audio from the filibuster in its entirety- but who would listen to 13 hours of repetitive prose? Dr. Paul was joined by several of his Senate allies, most notably Sen. Mike Lee, Sen. Ted Cruz, and Sen. Ron Johnson (Sen. Marco Rubio made a brief, politically superficial appearance). As for the Democrats, only Sen. Ron Wyden came to the podium to discuss and debate the issue at hand- with the exception of Harry Reid's unsuccessful attempt to limit debate and adjourn the body for the night. For the purpose of this podcast file, I attempted to include some of the back and forth between Sen. Paul and all of the major speakers during the filibuster period. I tried to edit out repetitive arguments by the same speaker to the best of my ability. It seemed that Sen. Paul may have been somehow aware of when news feed were going live, so at times, he reset the argument for television coverage. Video compliments of YouTube User: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/SenatorRandPaul/videos?view=0&flow=grid">SenatorRandPaul</a>.
