Rand Paul’s ‘outreach’ at Howard University a missed opportunity

Today's column from Leonard Pitts:

Rand Paul did just fine at Howard University, thank you very much. Or at least, that’s how he remembers it.

Paul, GOP senator from Kentucky, told the Christian Science Monitor on Wednesday that his recent visit to Howard didn’t go so bad at all. He said any perception to the contrary was created by — all together now — the “left-wing media.”

...it wasn’t left-wing media that lied to those students. “I’ve never wavered in my support for civil rights or the Civil Rights Act,” claimed Paul who, in fact, told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow in 2010 that the act overreached in telling private businesses they could not discriminate against black people.

Rand Paul's outreach

An editorial in today's Herald-Leader:

Sen. Rand Paul should keep visiting traditionally black colleges and universities — not because he'll win many converts with his Republicans-freed-the-slaves spiel but because he might learn something.

He might start to understand, for example, that new voter ID laws, voter purges and other obstacles erected by Republican legislatures and secretaries of state are updated versions of the literacy tests and poll taxes that southern Democrats once used to suppress the black vote.

...If Paul really wants blacks to trust the GOP, however, he should work to make voting easier, not harder. He also should chide fellow Republicans whose voter-suppression tactics channel the ugliness of the segregated South.

Coal's forecast cold in E. Ky.

An editorial in today's Herald-Leader:

Sen. Mitch McConnell and other Republicans gave the old "war on coal" canard a workout last week as Gina McCarthy, President Barack Obama's pick to head the Environmental Protection Agency, came up for a confirmation hearing.

In a statement, McConnell warned that McCarthy "would continue to foster this administration's radical environmental and anti-coal jobs agenda."

The environmental non-profit Appalachian Voices anticipated this line of attack and analyzed data from the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration, and, lo and behold, more people on average have been employed mining and processing coal during Obama's presidency than during that of his coal-friendly, regulation-averse predecessor, George W. Bush.

Rand Paul has lotsa 'splaining to do

Today's column from Clarence Page:

(Rand) Paul looked surprised at Howard when, after he asked if anyone knew that the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People had been founded by Republicans, his audience responded with a resoundingly impatient "Yes!"

"We know our history," one student shouted. Unfortunately, Paul didn't. He had to be prompted from the audience with the name of Massachusetts Republican Edward Brooke, the first African-American to be elected to the U.S. Senate by popular vote — and Paul still mangled it twice as "Edwin Brooks."

Worse, he expounded at length on the historically incorrect narrative that conservatives often give, that blacks left the party of Abraham Lincoln to follow Franklin D. Roosevelt's promise of "unlimited federal assistance," while Republicans only have the "less tangible... promise of equalizing opportunity through free markets."

Guess Who's Coming to Howard

The Daily Show reports on Rand Paul's recent visit to Howard University:

The new McConnell

From the Herald-Leader:

(Mitch) McConnell's office put out a press release this week announcing that the Senate's Republican leader had joined Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Florida, in introducing the Returned Exclusively for Unpaid National Debt (REFUND) Act.

The press release says it allows states to identify and — get this — "return unwanted federal funds to the Treasury to help pay down our deficits and debt."

We don't have to explain why a debt-reduction strategy based on the states returning "unwanted" federal money is ridiculous.

Rand Paul’s rewriting of his own remarks on the Civil Rights Act

From the Washington Post's Fact Checker:

(Rand) Paul, a potential GOP candidate for the 2016 presidential election, gave an interesting speech on Wednesday to historically black Howard University, but his remarks were overshadowed by his attempt to explain the controversy over his 2010 comments on the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964.

“I have never wavered in my support for civil rights and the Civil Rights Act,” he said in his speech. “The dispute, if there is one, has always been about how much of the remedy should come under federal or state or private purview.”

...Paul is rewriting history here. We don’t see anywhere in these interviews “an extended conversation about the ramifications beyond race,” at least in the way that Paul describes it at Howard University.

...We were tempted to give this Four Pinocchios but some of his language at Howard appears to be a product of fuzzy thinking. Still, Paul does earn Three Pinocchios for trying to recast and essentially erase what he said in 2010. It would be better to own up to his mistake — if he now thinks it was one — rather than sugarcoat it.

Rand Paul seeks to remake self, GOP

From today's Courier-Journal:

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul’s campaign to reinvent himself — and his Republican Party — rolled on this week with his appearance at Howard University, the historically African-American college in Washington, D.C.

But students he spoke to weren’t fooled and the public shouldn’t be either.

...his biggest hurdle was trying to convince the crowd that he is a stalwart supporter of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, despite past comments to the contrary including to The Courier-Journal Editorial Board in 2010.

CREW Files FBI and Ethics Complaints Against McConnell

A press release from Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington:

Washington, D.C. — Today, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) asked the FBI and the Senate Select Committee on Ethics to investigate whether Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) violated federal law and Senate rules by misusing Senate staff or resources to conduct opposition research on potential campaign opponents.

According to a report in Mother Jones, on February 2, 2013, Sen. McConnell met with aides to discuss research they had conducted about potential Democratic opponents, including actress Ashley Judd and Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes. The meeting was surreptitiously taped and a copy of the recording was later posted online.

The recording appears to reveal that Senate staff members conducted the campaign research, potentially violating federal law and Senate ethics rules.

“Using taxpayer-funded resources to pay staffers to dig up dirt on political opponents isn’t just an ethics violation, it’s a federal crime,” said CREW Executive Director Melanie Sloan. “As Sen. McConnell requested, the FBI is investigating the recording. A thorough and fair investigation necessitates the bureau also inquire into whether Sen. McConnell himself violated the law.”

In the recording, an unnamed presenter thanked the individuals who conducted the research, including “LAs,” an acronym for legislative assistant or legislative aide. The presenter specifically names Phil Maxson, who has been employed as a legislative aide in Sen. McConnell’s office since early 2011, and appears to refer to the senator’s chief of staff, Josh Holmes. Reports filed with the Federal Election Commission show neither man has been paid by Sen. McConnell’s campaign committee or leadership PAC.

When first questioned by reporters about the misuse of official resources, Sen. McConnell’s office refused to comment. Days later, apparently recognizing the legal violations, Sen. McConnell’s campaign manager claimed the staffers were thanked for conducting the research on their free time. Sloan continued, “Luckily enough, the FBI has the technology to parse the tape and discern what was really said. Given the questions raised, Sen. McConnell should welcome both an FBI and ethics committee investigation into his conduct.”

Maddow Calls Out Rand Paul Over Civil Rights Act

Expand background checks for gun safety

From today's Herald-Leader:

A Bluegrass Poll by The Courier-Journal in January found strong support for the rights of gun owners among adult Kentuckians, as you'd expect.

The poll also found that 75 percent in Kentucky support criminal background checks before all gun sales, including those between private individuals.

Yet Sen. Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader, has joined a filibuster threat led by fellow Kentuckian Sen. Rand Paul to block any gun control measure from coming up for a vote in the Senate, even expanded background checks.

Do pay attention to the man behind the curtain

An editorial in today's Courier-Journal:

Having been caught on a recording, discussing with his laughing staff a potential opponent’s bouts with depression, Sen. McConnell faced the cameras and the microphones and tried to change the story from one of bloodless calculation — his and his campaign’s — to one of third-rate, Nixonian bugging of his campaign headquarters — “the left’s,” or so he said without offering a shred of proof.

...The senator has avoided answering specific questions about the substance of the recording, sticking to his talking points that his wife’s ethnicity has been attacked and that this is the way “the left” operates. The magazine says the recording, provided by an anonymous source, did not come from a bugging operation. The FBI has been contacted. Theories are flying. Stay tuned.

In the meantime, all may be fair in love, war and politics, but there is something indecent about a seasoned pol who has held the same office since 1985, who ostensibly has his own record to run on, turning to an opponent’s mental health battles — something that one in four Americans experience in a given year — as a campaign opportunity.