Senator Rand Paul on Restoring Felons' Rights

I will say at the offset that Senator Rand Paul is one of my least favorite politicians.  I feel this way about Senator Paul because he has a peculiar tendency to say things about law that make me cringe.

Take Senator Paul's stance on drones.  Senator Paul was a fervent critic of the Obama Administration's use of drones to target and kill members of Al Qaeda.  He even took to the floor of the Senate and led a 13-hour filibuster on the subject, arguing that it is wrong for drones to kill people without regard for their due process rights.  Paul lamented the administration's claim that drones would not be used unless there was an "imminent" threat - arguing that this terminology was overly permissive.

I suspected, however, that Senator Paul was not really engaging with the legal issues - and my suspicion was confirmed when in a later interview, he said:

I’ve never argued against any technology being used when you have an imminent threat, an active crime going on. If someone comes out of a liquor store with a weapon and fifty dollars in cash, I don’t care if a drone kills him or a policeman kills him. 

While I thought that Senator Paul cared about meaningful limitations on government police power, it appears that he got a bit too distracted by the creepiness of drones to put forth consistent arguments.

Despite my background opinions, however, I recently learned that not all of Senator Paul's points are rubbish.  He recently made some other interesting remarks that are much less irritating than his other points on drones or (God forbid) the Second Amendment.

Via the Sentencing Law and Policy Blog, I learned that Senator Paul gave a speech in Louisville. The Courier-Journal reports on what Senator Paul said regarding the rights of felons who have completed their sentences:

“I am in favor of letting people get their rights back, the right to vote ... Second Amendment rights, all your rights to come back,” he said. “I know of one man who 30-some-odd years ago had pot plants in his closet in college, got a felony conviction in college, still can’t vote, and it’s plagued him his whole life trying to get work.”

I think that Senator Paul's point on the right to vote certainly has merit, and his Second Amendment claim (while potentially inaccurate given the limitations listed in District of Columbia v. Heller) may at least get people thinking about whether people who have been convicted of a crime - yet who have completed their sentence - are really too dangerous to be given firearms.

And despite my typical dislike of his remarks, Senator Paul's technique of juxtaposing the issue of felon rights with the war on drugs is probably the strongest way for him to make his case.