Rand Paul’s filibuster ended yesterday, after 13 hours. Neither Bruce nor I were clear on how to turn off GP’s post that was counting it, so…it’s gone. We executed it (so to speak). But where did America end up?

• Before: A poll showed that fully 41% of Democrats think the president should be able to order pre-emptive drone strikes on American soil without review or oversight (that is, “on his own” in the poll’s wording).
• After: The Democrat-led Senate has refused to pass this resolution, “Expressing the sense of the Senate against the use of drones to execute Americans on American soil”.

I think that means: according to the Senate, if Obama decides that you are a “suspected terrorist”, he could execute you and your family in a drone strike on your home. At least, the question is open. Obama’s America, Forward!

UPDATE (from the comments): heliotrope informs us that Senator Paul has just received a letter from Attorney General Holder, writing that the president does NOT “have the authority to use a weaponized drone to kill an American not engaged in combat on an American soil.” That’s better.

UPDATE: Republican senators McCain and Graham are clueless as ever, while liberal comedian Jon Stewart praises Rand Paul, sort of.

Sometimes you find someone who summarizes a situation so well, the nest way to comment on the story is to quote him. And so it is with this excerpt from Thomas Sowell’s piece in the National Review:

The man who shot the black teenager in Florida may be as guilty as sin, for all I know — or he may be innocent. We pay taxes so that there can be judges and jurors who sort out the facts. We do not need Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton or the president of the United States spouting off before the trial has even begun. Have we forgotten the media’s rush to judgment in the Duke University “rape” case that blew up completely when the facts came out?

If the facts show that a teenager who was no threat to anyone was shot and killed, it will be time to call for the death penalty. But if the facts show that the shooter was innocent, then it will be time to call for people in the media and in politics to keep their big mouths shut until they know what they are talking about.

Playing with racial polarization is playing with fire. . . .Race hustlers who stir up paranoia and belligerence are doing no favor to minority youngsters. There is no way to know how many of these youngsters’ confrontations with the police or others in authority have been needlessly aggravated by the steady drumbeat of racial hype they have been bombarded with.

H/t: WSJ.com’s Political Diary (available by subscription)

Every time I check the blogs, I learn new information about the case, about the actual incident, about the young man and about the man who shot him.  The more I learn, the more complex the case becomes.  As more details emerge, I am reminded of one of the greatest plays of classical Greece, Aeschylus’s Eumenides which begins with the Furies seeking vengeance on Orestes for killing Clytmenestra his mother his mother.  Soon, the goddess Athene arrives and acknowledges that the Furies have a case.

Before the matter is to be resolved, she wants to hear both sides and wants to make sure the facts are weighed in a dispassionate manner — before a court of Athenian citizens.

So too should those who determine the fate of Mr. Zimmerman:  weigh the facts, all the facts, dispassionately. (more…)