While I appreciate the sense in which a legal background prepares one for the business of crafting laws, I do at times wish that we had at least a few more scientists and teachers and skilled laborers in our legislatures if only to provide a little more breadth of vision.
Then along comes Rand Paul, ophthalmologist, to prove once again to anyone who has not caught on yet that DOCTORS ARE NOT SCIENTISTS, generally speaking, and like Ben Carson and Bill Frist one can be quite good at the narrow specialty in which he is trained yet be totally uneducated in any larger sense. I blame Galen.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) likened President Barack Obama's decision to take executive action on immigration to then-President Franklin D. Roosevelt's executive order authorizing putting Japanese-Americans in internment camps during World War II.
Paul made the comments on Friday, a day after Obama formally announced the executive actions, at the Kentucky Association of Counties conference in Lexington, Kentucky.
"I care that too much power gets in one place. Why? Because there are instances in our history where we allow power to gravitate toward one person and that one person then makes decisions that really are egregious," Paul said. "Think of what happened in World War II where they made the decision. The president issued an executive order. He said to Japanese people 'we're going to put you in a camp. We're going to take away all your rights and liberties and we're going to intern you in a camp.'"
"We shouldn't allow that much power to gravitate to one individual. We need to separate the power."
Which is funny, because Rand Paul is ostensibly running for President, apparently on the platform that he will never issue an executive order. And not to defend Roosevelt, it was a shameful chapter in American history that took more than 40 years for America to correct. But comparing these two executive orders is just stupid and insulting.
Why even have Presidents then? Any of them can issue executive orders, and anyone could send Americans to camps according to Paul's "logic",
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Close this window Jump to comment formWhile I appreciate the sense in which a legal background prepares one for the business of crafting laws, I do at times wish that we had at least a few more scientists and teachers and skilled laborers in our legislatures if only to provide a little more breadth of vision.
Then along comes Rand Paul, ophthalmologist, to prove once again to anyone who has not caught on yet that DOCTORS ARE NOT SCIENTISTS, generally speaking, and like Ben Carson and Bill Frist one can be quite good at the narrow specialty in which he is trained yet be totally uneducated in any larger sense. I blame Galen.
November 22, 2014 at 4:04 AM