Video of the Day – Battle Royale as Rand Paul Spars with Chris Christie

There’s nobody running for President under the GOP ticket that I could even consider supporting other than Rand Paul. Although I’ve become disillusioned with him as of late, particularly with the way his campaign is being managed, he did an excellent job defending the 4th Amendment in the Republican debate last night against the incredibly corrupt, neocon thug Chris Christie.

What’s so amusing about the exchange is that Christie couldn’t talk for one minute about NSA surveillance without lying. He stated that:

I was appointed U.S. attorney by President Bush on September 10th, 2001, and the world changed enormously the next day, and that happened in my state.

Now here’s the truth from EmptyWheel:

Never mind that most US Attorneys don’t, themselves, go before the FISC to present cases (usually it is people from the National Security Division, though it was OIPR when Christie was US Attorney), never mind that the name of the court is the “Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

The real doozie here is Chris Christie’s claim that he “was appointed U.S. attorney by President Bush on September 10th, 2001.”

On December 7, 2001 — three months after the attacks — President Bush released this notice of nomination.

Now, maybe Bush spoke with his big New Jersey fundraiser Chris Christie and assured him the payoff — in the form of a key appointment — would be coming. Maybe that conversation even happened on September 10.

But it is not the case that he was nominated on September 10.

I attribute this fib — like the mistakes about the name of FISC — to be bluster and debate confusion. What I find more offensive is that Andrea Mitchell, when hailing Christie’s national security credentials later in the night, literally claimed he was nominated on September 10 and started on September 12.

And there’s a far bigger subtext here.

Christie implies he was involved in the dragnet in question. He was US Attorney from January 2002 to December 2008 — so he in fact would have been in office during the two years when the phone dragnet worked through the Servic–um, Surveillance court, and four years of the Internet dragnet. But if, as he implies, he was involved in the dragnet for the entire span of his tenure — and remember, there were huge cases run out of Trenton right out of 9/11 — then he was also using the fruits of illegal wiretapping to do his job. Not Servic — um, Surveillance court authorized dragnets and wiretaps, but also illegal wiretaps.

Which may explain why he’s so invested in rebutting any questions about the legitimacy of the program.

Now watch the exchange.

Notice how Christie always tries to tug at people’s heartstrings in his impassioned defense of authoritarianism? He exclaims, “my wife was two blocks away” on 9/11, as if that’s some badge of honor. Well I was two blocks away that morning as well champ, and you don’t see me trying to eviscerate the Constitution in response.

As much as I dislike pretty much everyone running for President, there is one person who is far and away the worst: Chris Christie. Just in case you need a refresher on the man:

Chris Christie Calls Snowden Supporters “Civil Liberties Extremists” in His Latest Desperate Neocon Diatribe

Chris Christie Spent $82,000 in Taxpayer Money on Concessions at MetLife Stadium.

New Jersey’s Debt is Downgraded by Fitch as Chris Christie Funnels Pension Money to Private Equity and Hedge Funds

The Trouble With Chris Christie by Chris Hedges

Chris Christie Calls Libertarianism a “Dangerous Thought”

How Marijuana Legalization in America is Destroying Mexican Drug Cartel Business

The man is heroically awful.

In Liberty,
Michael Krieger

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