Rand Paul: Answers Everything at Reddit, Another Bill to Federally Ban Abortion
The candidate on ISIS, pot, Bernie, Trump, hair, debt, .gifs, and duck-sized horses
Kentucky senator and Republican presidential candidate Rand Paul put many feet forward in a freewheeling Reddit "Ask Me Anything" last night. Some highlights from his answers, many of them cheeky in a reddit fashion:
ISIS?
First thing we should do is stop arming them. They ride around with a billion dollars worth of our humvees. We can stop intervening in civil wars and toppling dictators and making radical jihadists stronger.
Pot?
I would remove prohibition of cannabis from federal law and give authority back to the states to decide.
Bernie?
A debate with me and Bernie would be great. People would be well served by it. I've already publicly offered to debate Bernie right now. In the Dem debate Bernie seemed to be uncomfortable talking about the actual cost of his programs for tax payers. We need real solutions without bankrupting our country.
Debt?
I've written detailed 5 year budget plans that have spending cuts in every department. We have to reverse what's going on in congress. The left and the right make deals: the left gets more welfare spending and the right gets more military spending. It's going to take the leadership of a president who isn't afraid to cut spending across the board.
Differences between him and Trump:
I have actual plans and policy to solve our problems
I in now way shape or form intend to shut down the internet
I have way better hair
More on his hair:
It takes a lot of work. I don't let anyone touch a strand of it but me.
Rand Paul wants to release the "missing 28 pages" of the 9/11 Commission Report Joint Congressional Investigation into 9/11. He comes "from an intellectual tradition that values liberty. I love reading Hayek, Mises, and Rothbard. I started a reading program for my interns in the senate with books from these thinkers. We sit down and discuss them as a group each semester." Fave drink? Kentucky bourbon. Fave flick? Enemy of the State. He'd prefer to fight 100 duck-sized horses.
And he claims to really dig the often-used "It's Happening!" Paul .gif—especially the version also including him:
Paul also this week, and not for the first time, introduced a "Life at Conception Act" that would effectively federally ban abortion, an issue in which he differs with many libertarians (though it is not necessarily and obviously un-libertarian if you actually believe a fetus at any stage of development is a human life).
—To implement equal protection for the right to life of each born and preborn human person, [the bill]…declares that the right to life guaranteed by the Constitution is vested in each human being. Nothing in this Act shall be construed to require the prosecution of any woman for the death of her unborn child, a prohibition on in vitro fertilization, or a prohibition on use of birth control or another means of preventing fertilization….
In this Act: 13 (1) HUMAN PERSON; HUMAN BEING.—The 14 terms "human person" and "human being" include each member of the species homo sapiens at all stages of life, including the moment of fertilization or cloning, or other moment at which an individual member of the human species comes into being…
In his 2011 book Liberty Defined, Ron Paul was against the federalization of abortion law, though also against abortion.