Rand Paul's fumbling attempt at NSA reform

For the sake of transparency, I’ll admit I’m not a huge fan of Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ken.

I disagree with his policies, ranging from health care to gun control to women’s health issues. However, I admire his recently-filed lawsuit against the Obama administration regarding the Naional Security Agency surveillance program, with one large exception: he should have made it a bipartisan affair.

Paul filed the suit with Ken Cuccinelli, the former Republican attorney general of Virginia who came under fire after receiving thousands of dollars worth of improper gifts while in office, and Matt Kibbe, president of the conservative group FreedomWorks.

Originally, earlier drafts of the suit included Sen. Mark Udall, D-Colo., as a plaintiff with Paul.

However, the final draft of the suit removed Sen. Udall and replaced him with the president of FreedomWorks. The motives behind that move were undoubtedly political.

In fact, the politics behind the filing of this lawsuit don’t stop there. Well-known constitutional lawyer Bruce Fein accused Paul of plagiarizing the lawsuit.

Paul had hired Fein, at a discounted rate, to write the suit. However, in the final draft of the lawsuit, Fein’s name was removed completely and replaced with Cuccinelli’s. Of course, the plagiarism accusation would be less serious if the final “Cuccinelli” draft of the suit wasn’t virtually identical to Fein’s original work.

With little contrast, Cuccinelli’s version says, “Since the MATP was publicly disclosed, public opinion polls showed widespread opposition to the dragnet collection, storage, retention and search of telephone metadata collected on every domestic or international phone call made or received by citizens or permanent resident aliens in the United States.” while Fein’s is identical with the exception of the word “when,” while Fein’s version has “since” instead.

In order to make a more powerful, lasting and meaningful statement with this lawsuit, Paul should have refrained from playing politics. He should have worked with Democrats as well as Republicans to make this lawsuit happen.

There is opposition to the NSA surveillance program on both sides of the aisle, and the lawsuit calls for a simple and logical reform of the program. It seeks to require warrants to obtain peoples’ metadata, thereby falling within the Fourth Amendment’s scope.

The convincing plagiarism accusation does not help Paul’s case here, and it thoroughly cripples a seemingly valiant attempt to fix a serious problem in our nation’s approach to national security.

If Rand Paul were truly the libertarian champion of freedom he claims to be, he would not have played politics with this opportunity to reform the NSA’s surveillance program.

Then again, maybe Paul isn’t as interested in reform as he his in politics — he is a politician himself, after all.

­— sydhoffe@indiana.edu