Rand Paul, Protecting America!
The Huffington Post has fun with one of those proposals that GOP Senate candidate from Kentucky Rand Paul, son of Ron, is hyping to differentiate himself from those libertarian ideas that apparently are causing him such trouble:
Republican Senatorial candidate Rand Paul wants to build a fence along the U.S.-Mexico border. It's a rather ho-hum proposition in the larger context of conservative ideas -- except that Paul wants that fence to be electric and he wants it built underground.
Even Paul's campaign doesn't seem to want to talk much about it:
His website says only the following: "My plans include an underground electric fence, with helicopter stations to respond quickly to breaches of the border." The details of how it would be built, what it would take to make it work and how much it would cost are left unanswered.
Moreover, aides to the Kentucky Republican have refused repeated attempts to explain the idea to the Huffington Post. On June 14, Paul's former spokesman and current campaign manager, Jesse Benton, said he would call the following day to provide further details. He never did.
Useless, expensive, eminent-domain requiring boondoggles like this should not be the concern of a politician running on limited-government principles. Ben Sanders blogged here back in March about the sad fate of the last federal attempt at building portions of an aboveground border fence in Arizona. Read early and often Reason magazine's classic 2006 guide to a sensible, liberty-respecting immigration policy.
