Searches and seizures without judicial warrant... 

Sweeping wiretapping of phone calls and emails... 

Invasive searches without probable cause... 

The indefinite detention of American citizens without a trial by jury... 


This isn’t some far-fetched nightmare. This is today’s reality in the United States. 

Whether it's FISA, indefinite detention within the NDAA, or the so-called "PATRIOT" Act, the Big Government statists in Washington, D.C. have launched an all-out assault on our personal liberties. 

Our Fourth Amendment rights are under direct attack. They are being slowly peeled away in the name of national security. 

Please take a moment to watch the video I've put together about the dangers Big Government schemes like the "PATRIOT" Act pose to our God-given liberties. 

When I was sworn in as a U.S. Senator, I took an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. 

And an oath to God is something I take seriously. 

During the 113th session of Congress, I'm going to do everything I can to defeat statist schemes to trample our Fourth Amendment freedoms. 

And I hope I can count on your continued support as I lead the fight in Washington against the all-out assault on our personal liberties. 


In Liberty,

Senator Rand Paul 

As she stood in front of her 5th grade class on the very first day of school, she told the children an untruth. Like most teachers, she looked at her students and said that she loved them all the same. However, that was impossible, because there in the front row, slumped in his seat, was a little boy named Teddy Stoddard.

Mrs. Thompson had watched Teddy the year before and noticed that he did not play well with the other children, that his clothes were messy and that he constantly needed a bath. In addition, Teddy could be unpleasant.

It got to the point where Mrs. Thompson would actually take delight in marking his papers with a broad red pen, making bold X's and then putting a big "F" at the top of his papers.

At the school where Mrs. Thompson taught, she was required to review each child's past records and she put Teddy's off until last. However, when she reviewed his file, she was in for a surprise.

Teddy's first grade teacher wrote, "Teddy is a bright child with a ready laugh. He does his work neatly and has good manners... he is a joy to be around.."

His second grade teacher wrote, "Teddy is an excellent student, well liked by his classmates, but he is troubled because his mother has a terminal illness and life at home must be a struggle."

His third grade teacher wrote, "His mother's death has been hard on him. He tries to do his best, but his father doesn't show much interest and his home life will soon affect him if some steps aren't taken."

Teddy's fourth grade teacher wrote, "Teddy is withdrawn and doesn't show much interest in school. He doesn't have many friends and he sometimes sleeps in class."

By now, Mrs. Thompson realized the problem and she was ashamed of herself. She felt even worse when her students brought her Christmas presents, wrapped in beautiful ribbons and bright paper, except for Teddy's. His present was clumsily wrapped in the heavy, brown paper That he got from a grocery bag Mrs. Thompson took pains to open it in the middle of the other presents. Some of the children started to laugh when she found a rhinestone bracelet with some of the stones missing, and a bottle that was one-quarter full of perfume.. But she stifled the children's laughter when she exclaimed how pretty the bracelet was, putting it on, and dabbing some of the perfume on her wrist. Teddy Stoddard stayed after school that day just long enough to say, "Mrs. Thompson, today you smelled just like my Mom used to." After the children left, she cried for at least an hour.

On that very day, she quit teaching reading, writing and arithmetic. Instead, she began to teach children. Mrs. Thompson paid particular attention to Teddy. As she worked with him, his mind seemed to come alive. The more she encouraged him, the faster he responded. By the end of the year, Teddy had become one of the smartest children in the class and, despite her lie that she would love all the children the same, Teddy became one of her "teacher's pets.."

Let’s roll the tape:

"With all due respect, the fact is we had four dead Americans. 

"Was it because of a protest, or was it because of guys out for a walk one night who decided they'd go kill some Americans? 

"What difference at this point does it make? It is our job to figure out what happened and to do everything we can to prevent it from ever happening again, senator."

It was a dazzling play, instantly destined to enter the lore of political hardball and be studied and dissected for decades.

Such a perfect eruption of concentrated, seductively appealing dishonesty had to have been crafted by the father of high-wire lies, the master distracter himself, the Big Bill. The formidable but workmanlike Hillary lacks the creative gift and mendacious flair to actualize the McCarthy-Hellman standard: “Every word is a lie, including “and” and “the.”

Let’s admire her bravura work. Roll the super slo-mo, please:

"With all due respect, the fact is we had four dead Americans." Wait, read her lips. I think she said:  “Have you questioners no decency or understanding of the gravity here? Four Americans died! This is much too serious and difficult for you to be asking me serious and difficult questions about it!”

Poor Senator Johnson. Look at his head snap back with the hit!

Roll tape:

"Was it because of a protest, or was it because of guys out for a walk one night who decided they'd go kill some Americans?”

“Or?” Just two options? Either it was an angry movie review that spontaneously spun out of control, or it was some guys out fitness striding who combusted really spontaneously?

That’s a new one. No one until our distraught, reputation-saving, would-be future president ever suggested anything remotely like it. A bloody attack on an American mission that materialized from nothing. The Big Bang writ small.

It’s not accidental the Secretary’s false A or B excluded the truthful C: It was a planned attack on America by Al Qaeda affiliates on the anniversary of 9/11.

The Administration cretins are still lying through their whitened teeth and the sleeping dogs of the press are still refusing to bark. There are times when you might be forgiven for understanding why Bill Ayers decided only some really loud noises might wake the people up.

Back to the tape:

“What difference at this point does it make?” 

That’s a powerful head fake: “Nothing can bring back the dead, you petty politician. Why are you asking these questions? Why can’t you just support the transformative vision of our historic president and stop trying to dig up inconvenient facts that our loyal protectors of the press have been so good to help us keep buried?”

Tape:

“It is our job to figure out what happened and to do everything we can to prevent it from ever happening again, senator."

Wow! Did you SEE Hillary’s neck-snapping spin and dive into the end zone?! Right over the flattened senator, across the goal line, and into the safe embrace of the media refs who raised triumphant arms, screeched “7!!” out their whistles, and immediately fed the highlight into the news cycle’s repeating loop.

Let’s break it down. “Why are you asking me about the nature and genesis of the attack? Or the motives, possible planning, and tactics of the attackers?  Don’t you know our solemn duty—the only thing we can do--is figure out the genesis and nature of the attack, the motives, possible planning, and tactics of the attackers?

That’s how we can be prepared to make sure nothing like this will ever happen again. So please! Stop asking irrelevant questions about the genesis and nature of the attack, the motives, possible planning, and tactics of the attackers. This is too important for politics!”

It was a show for the ages. For our age, anyway.

For the record, Madame Secretary, it makes all the difference. It matters for public accountability: Understanding how the attack developed sheds light on how reasonable or not the decisions were that preceded it. It helps the public gauge the magnitude of the failure and reasonable consequences for a diplomat or politician who claims “full responsibility.” Is that just a convenient phrase to survive the news cycle, or does it mean something?

It matters for the administration’s credibility: People have a right to know if their government dealt straight or if it maneuvered feverishly to conceal and mislead for advantage in the campaign’s closing weeks. Every lie advanced the president’s narrative and deflected criticism. Coincidence?

It matters for understanding the larger global context and US interest: A planned Al Qaeda terror attack on America runs counter to the president’s story of positive trends in the Middle East. Is America’s stock rising or falling? Is Al Qaeda dwindling or resurgent? Was the US mission as rumored an illegal conduit of arms to Islamist rebels in Syria?

When John F. Kennedy took a bath in the Bay of Pigs, he couldn’t blame it on a Cuban fiesta that got out of hand. He never dreamed of trying. He had to own his policies and their consequences. A more professional press of the day helped ensure it.

We’ve fallen far if we’re transfixed by temper and tears. What was the issue again, anyway?

"We take choice for granted in our lives in every othere area, but really education is the most important thing.  Especially as a parent, you want your kids to have a solid education."

"School choice is now at a tipping point. In the United States, more charter schools are cropping up, while tax dollars and voucher systems are now allowing the money to follow the child. Evidence indicates that these new educational options are effective, and less costly, in improving the quality of K-12 education. 

"Kids in America have more choices today than they've ever had before.  Every empirical study shows a positiive effect, and no study has found a negative effect."

Twenty-seven years ago today, the space shuttle Challenger exploded as the world watched in horror.  Seven brave Americans lost their lives. 

That evening, President Reagan reached out to a nation in mourning.  His remarks were comforting and inspiring. 

Three days later, at a special memorial service, President Reagan promised, "We will always remember them, these skilled professionals, scientists and adventurers, these artists and teachers and family men and women, and we will cherish each of their stories - stories of triumph and bravery, stories of true American heroes."

As we remember them, may we commit to live, as they did, with courage and accomplishment, and to meet our unique challenges with joy.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I’d planned to speak to you tonight to report on the state of the Union, but the events of earlier today have led me to change those plans. Today is a day for mourning and remembering. Nancy and I are pained to the core by the tragedy of the shuttle Challenger. We know we share this pain with all of the people of our country. This is truly a national loss.

Nineteen years ago, almost to the day, we lost three astronauts in a terrible accident on the ground. But, we’ve never lost an astronaut in flight; we’ve never had a tragedy like this. And perhaps we’ve forgotten the courage it took for the crew of the shuttle; but they, the Challenger Seven, were aware of the dangers, but overcame them and did their jobs brilliantly. We mourn seven heroes: Michael Smith, Dick Scobee, Judith Resnik, Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Gregory Jarvis, and Christa McAuliffe. We mourn their loss as a nation together.

For the families of the seven, we cannot bear, as you do, the full impact of this tragedy. But we feel the loss, and we’re thinking about you so very much. Your loved ones were daring and brave, and they had that special grace, that special spirit that says, "give me a challenge and I’ll meet it with joy." They had a hunger to explore the universe and discover its truths. They wished to serve, and they did. They served all of us.

We’ve grown used to wonders in this century. It’s hard to dazzle us. But for twenty-five years the United States space program has been doing just that. We’ve grown used to the idea of space, and perhaps we forget that we’ve only just begun. We’re still pioneers. They, the member of the Challenger crew, were pioneers.

And I want to say something to the schoolchildren of America who were watching the live coverage of the shuttle’s takeoff. I know it is hard to understand, but sometimes painful things like this happen. It’s all part of the process of exploration and discovery. It’s all part of taking a chance and expanding man’s horizons. The future doesn’t belong to the fainthearted; it belongs to the brave. The Challenger crew was pulling us into the future, and we’ll continue to follow them.

I’ve always had great faith in and respect for our space program, and what happened today does nothing to diminish it. We don’t hide our space program. We don’t keep secrets and cover things up. We do it all up front and in public. That’s the way freedom is, and we wouldn’t change it for a minute. We’ll continue our quest in space. There will be more shuttle flights and more shuttle crews and, yes, more volunteers, more civilians, more teachers in space. Nothing ends here; our hopes and our journeys continue. I want to add that I wish I could talk to every man and woman who works for NASA or who worked on this mission and tell them: "Your dedication and professionalism have moved an impressed us for decades. And we know of your anguish. We share it."

There’s a coincidence today. On this day 390 years ago, the great explorer Sir Francis Drake died aboard ship off the coast of Panama. In his lifetime the great frontiers were the oceans, and a historian later said, "He lived by the sea, died on it, and was buried in it." Well, today we can say of the challenger crew: Their dedication was, like Drake’s, complete.

The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honored us by the manner in which they lived their lives. We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for the journey and waved goodbye and "slipped the surly bonds of earth" to "touch the face of God."

Read More:  President Reagan's Remarks at a Special Memorial Service for the Astronauts

Senator Rand Paul has been a shining light on Capitol Hill.  He's a champion of the values and principles that make America great.  

He's been  on the forefront of the battle to preserve individual liberty, free markets, sound money, and constitutional government, even when he's been opposed by people in his own party.

Senator Paul knows that "political parties are empty vessels unless we embue them with values."  We must take time to reflect on the things that matter most, understand and clearly explain who we are, and be true to our guiding principles and values.

The bigger the state, the bigger the government - the smaller the citizen. 

If I’ve come to any realizations about life, or about society and life that I think can change the way a person views society that is one of them. 

Yep, the bigger the state the smaller the citizen, and that has been the core, the secret to America’s great success.



We know that the citizen needs to be big, important, individual, autonomous, strong. The land of the free, the home of the brave, that's impossible as the state gets bigger. Everything gets smaller. Liberty gets smaller, individuality gets smaller, goodness gets smaller, human character gets smaller, and our importance becomes smaller. Everything about us becomes smaller as the government gets bigger. This is not a political point that I want to make on behalf of one party.

There are different ways in which government can do things. You can differ if you’re the left or you’re the right, of course, but on this issue Americans have been virtually unanimous, until the modern period when we started taking in European ideas, such as the bigger the government the better it is for people. But it isn't better for people. It doesn’t make people more important and people get, generally speaking, worse.

It’s not that they become cruel or mean, it’s that they stop thinking about how to take care of themselves, and how to take care of others. Taking care of myself is a moral issue. Yes, for me to take care of me and for you to take care of you is a moral demand. Not only that we take care of others, I’ll come to that in a moment, but that we take care of ourselves, but  the bigger the government the less we take care of ourselves.

We assume the government - the state - will take care of us. That’s a real problem. If I am not for myself who will be for me? First you have to take care of yourself, then you take care of your loved ones, and people who depend upon you, then you take care of the stranger. But as the government gets bigger you take less care of yourself, you take less care of your loved ones, and you take less care of the stranger. That's why Americans give more charity than Europeans.

That’s why Americans volunteer more than Europeans. I’m talking about the Western Europeans in the welfare states that they have created. Because they know, the state will take care of me, the state will take care of my parents.

I mean the notion that the state will take care of my parents? I mean the idea is so foreign to me as an American and as a religious person, whose religion demands that I honor my father and mother. Not that I have the state honor my mother and father; I have to. People do become less, when the state becomes bigger. We become less important, our character is diminished. But people don’t think this way, we just think of, "Well, isn’t it beautiful the state takes care of me." And then you know what happens among other things? What happens is we get preoccupied with trivial things. Instead of preoccupying ourselves with taking care of ourselves, taking care of our loved ones, and taking care the stranger, we start getting preoccupied with, for example: "Gee, how much vacation time will I have?" "How much free time will I have any given week?"

That’s the preoccupation so often in Western Europe. There are national strikes over vacation time. We don’t have national strikes in the United States over vacation time. We actually think - among other things - that work ennobles. In the system that believes that the state should get bigger work is not regarded as ennobling, work is regarded as a big pain to be avoided when possible. So, yes indeed, if you care about liberty - and that’s the most obvious, because as the state gets bigger, my options get smaller. It takes more of my money away, it takes up my own preoccupations; they become the state’s preoccupations, and then I am free to go and lie in the sun during the Winter. That’s what’s left - and so yes, the bigger the state; the smaller the citizen; the less we do for ourselves, the less we do for others, the less our character develops, the less work we do.

This was not the vision of the people who founded the United States of America. It is the vision of those who founded the welfare states of Europe. That’s your choice: which do you prefer?

January is a great time to learn about Benjamin Franklin.  He was born on January 17, 1706 and was one of the most influential of our Founding Fathers.

You could spend a year studying his amazing life and not do him justice.  

He loved to learn, work, create, and serve.  He developed an ingenious system for self improvement that he said was the secret of his success.  

Here's a one minute overview of his life, with other resources listed below.  There's so much to learn from this great patriot!  

For Adults and Older Kids

• Biography of Benjamin Franklin
• Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
• Founders Fridays: Benjamin Franklin  (39:40)
• Drive Thru History  (7:43)
• 27 Interesting Facts about Ben Franklin
• Benjamin Franklin Quotes

For Younger Kids

• Benjamin Franklin For Kids
• Stories of Benjamin Franklin for Children
• Ben and Me  (21:05)
• The Animated Hero Classics: Benjamin Franklin, Scientist and Inventor  (24:49)
• The Animated Hero Classics: Resource and Activity Book
• Ben's Interactive Games

For All

• Benjamin Franklin: In Search of a Better World  (Great bio and wonderful activities)
• The Miracle in Philadelphia  (3:52)

Possible Activities

• Ben learned to read at a very young age and loved reading!  Read together.
• As a boy, Ben worked in his dad's candle shop. Make a candle or read a story by candle light.
• Ben loved to swim and created his own fins.  Go swimming.  Use fins if you have them.
• Ben kept a personal journal all his life.  Keep a journal.
• Ben helped publish a newspaper.  Publish a family newsletter.
• Ben set goals for self improvement.  Set a goal for self improvement and work to accomplish it.
• Ben made kites to perform his experiments.  Make a kite and fly it when the weather permits.  (Don't use your kite to experiment with electricity.  It can be dangerous.)
• Ben created the first lending library in America.  Visit a public library.
• Ben madeinventions that solved problems.  Create something that solves a problem.
• Ben wrote his autobiography and epitaph.  Write your autobiography or epitaph.

“If to be venerated for benevolence, if to be admired for talents, if to be esteemed for patriotism, if to be loved for philanthropy, can gratify the human mind, you must have the pleasing consolation that you have not lived in vain.”  ~George Washington to Benjamin Franklin  

For the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, eight wonderful women were asked to talk about abortion, each from her own unique perspective.  

Their purpose is to help people understand the "reality of abortion and how it affects individual children, mothers, families, and communities."

Those who profit from the lucrative abortion industry seek to hide the horrendous, haunting human reality.  They offer abortion as a pain-free solution to a challenging situation.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Abortion often causes untold agony for the mother, and the baby. 

Thank goodness great people are speaking out!  Many are becoming pro-life as they learn the awful truth about abortion.

Participants in the discussion include:   Susan B. Anthony List President Marjorie Dannenfelser,  VP of Government Affairs Rep. Musgrave, Melissa Ohden, Rebecca Kiessling, Dr. Alveda King, Georgette Forney, Carol Crossed, and Abby Johnson. 

A worried woman went to her gynecologist and said:

“Doctor, I have a serious problem and desperately need your help! My baby is not even one year old, and I’m pregnant again. I don’t want kids so close together.”

So the doctor said: “Okay, and what do you want me to do?”

She said: “I want you to end my pregnancy, and I’m counting on your help with this.”

The doctor thought for a little, and after some silence, he said to the lady: “I think I have a better solution for your problem. It’s less dangerous for you, too.”

She smiled, thinking that the doctor was going to accept her request.

Then he continued: “You see, in order for you not to have to take care of two babies at the same time, let’s kill the one in your arms. This way, you could rest some before the other one is born. If we’re going to kill one of them, it doesn’t matter which one it is. There would be no risk for your body if you chose the one in your arms.”

The lady was horrified and said: “No, doctor! How terrible! It’s a crime to kill a child!”

“I agree,” the doctor replied. “But you seemed to be okay with it, so I thought maybe that was the best solution.”

The doctor smiled, realizing that he had made his point.

He convinced the mom that there is no difference between killing a child that’s already been born and killing one that’s still in the womb. The crime is the same!