On Wednesday afternoon Kentucky senator Rand Paul, a Republican presidential candidate, began what he’s calling a filibuster of the Senate’s renewal of the PATRIOT Act. Here’s a tweet from Paul announcing the speech:
I’ve just taken the senate floor to begin a filibuster of the Patriot Act renewal. It’s time to end the NSA spying!
— Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) May 20, 2015
Watch his speech live at C-SPAN’s website here.
Paul is in opposition to Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, another Kentucky Republican who is supporting Paul’s bid for president. McConnell supports the renewal of the PATRIOT Act and its provisions on surveillance of terrorist suspects.
This isn’t the libertarian Republican’s first stab at a long, uninterrupted speech on the Senate floor. In March 2013, Paul engaged in a filibuster of the nomination of John Brennan to the top post at the CIA in proest of the practice of drone strikes on American civilians who were engaging in acts with known terror groups overseas.
