Meet Rand Paul. The most salient thing about him is that he’s currently lacking an ass. And just to make it clear that’s not an animal reference, the Daily Show‘s John Oliver — may his tribe increase — would call it his arse. Except that he doesn’t currently have one, so it’s not really his arse, if you’re following along as closely as you always should.
However, we shouldn’t worry too much about his current ass-less-ness. Because he’s about to have it handed to him in November. To meet him is to understand why. So without further ado…
Rand Paul on the Americans with Disabilities Act:
The short version: he thinks it’s unfair to business owners.
Paul was asked whether he supports the Americans with Disabilities Act, the landmark 1990 legislation that established a prohibition of discrimination on the basis of disability. Paul said he advocates local governments to decide whether disabled individuals deserve rights. Requiring businesses to provide access to disabled people, Paul argued, isn’t “fair to the business owner.” …
PAUL: You know a lot of things on employment ought to be done locally. You know, people finding out right or wrong locally. You know, some of the things, for example we can come up with common sense solutions — like for example if you have a three story building and you have someone apply for a job, you get them a job on the first floor if they’re in a wheelchair as supposed to making the person who owns the business put an elevator in, you know what I mean? So things like that aren’t fair to the business owner.
These are the Paul’s own words, approvingly quoted at Catholic.org:
Before 1973, abortion was illegal in most states. Since Roe v. Wade, over 50 million children have died in abortion procedures.
I would strongly support legislation restricting federal courts from hearing cases like Roe v. Wade. Such legislation would only require a majority vote, making it more likely to pass than a pro-life constitutional amendment.
Legislation “restricting federal courts from hearing cases like Roe v. Wade” may be thoroughly unconstitutional, but all’s fair when you’re fighting the forces of darkness to save more than a million “children” a year.
Purely as an aside, if that which you abort is a child, then what does that make Rand Paul? Let’s leave that as a parlor game. (Kiel, I’m counting on you to step up to the plate!)
And, one of these days, I would really love to hear the Paul explain how he proposes to define “cases like Roe v. Wade”.
Rand Paul on the The Civil Rights Act:
Short version: he thinks it’s unfair to business owners.
The Paul believes that government shouldn’t be allowed to discriminate against anyone just because they’re black (or brown, or whatever the color of the day happens to be); nor should anyone who receives government funding; but if a private business owner wants to post a sign on his door saying “Blacks not welcome here”, they should jolly well have the right to do so.
Q: Would you have voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1964?
A: I like the Civil Rights Act in the sense that in ended discrimination in all public domains, and I’m all in favor of that.
Q: But?
A: Ha ha ha. You had to ask me the “but.” I don’t like the idea of telling private business owners. I abhor racism. I think it’s a bad business decision to ever exclude anybody from your restaurant. But at the same time I do believe in private ownership. But I think that there should be absolutely no discrimination in anything that gets any public funding and that’s most of what the Civil Rights Act was about, to my mind.
Just to be clear: the Paul supports segregated lunch counters, and whites-only drinking fountains. That is to say, he abhors them, and he would never patronize a business that practiced such practices, but he supports the right of private businesses to practice such practices. Apparently, only such practices will make us a perfect society.
The Paul was on Rachel Maddow‘s MSNBC show last night. She gave him a few gazillion chances to walk away from this position. But he’s a man of his convictions. So he doggedly kept repeating his support for this proposition in the abstract — the Civil Rights Act should not apply to private businesses — while kinda sorta side-stepping the specific question about segregated lunch counters.
And he kept repeating the view that if you forbid restaurants from discriminating against customers on the basis of race, then a) you are asserting that “restaurants are publicly owned and not privately owned”, and b) that automatically gives customers the right to bring guns into that restaurant. (So if you don’t want guns in restaurants, especially where there’s drinking going on — you need to allow them to practice racism.)
You’ve just got to love this guy. And the person right now who may love him even more than his own mother does would have to be the campaign manager of his Democratic opponent, Jack Conway.