#StandWithRand Top Tweet During Rand Paul Filibuster Tonight

A small group, led by Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, is stalling the Senate tonight by waging an old-school, speak-until-you-can-speak-no-more filibuster (also deemed the #filiblizzard) over the government’s use of lethal drone strikes. Their attempt is forcing the Senate to delay the expected confirmation of John O. Brennan to lead the Central Intelligence Agency.

Watch in on C-SPAN live here.

During the last few hours, the hash tag #StandWithRand began to trend becoming the number one trend on Twitter around 6PM CST. Rand continued by saying, "I will not sit quietly and let [Obama] shred the Constitution. His Facebook posted this photo below which reached 25,000 shares and 36,000 likes in less than four hours.

Mr. Paul, who opposes Mr. Brennan’s nomination, followed through on his plan to filibuster the confirmation of President Obama’s nominee after receiving a letter this month from Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. that refused to rule out the use of drone strikes within the United States in “extraordinary circumstances”.

“What will be the standard for how we kill Americans in America?” Mr. Paul asked. “Could political dissent be part of the standard for drone strikes?”

Although Mr. Paul hasn't yet yielded the floor, a move that would effectively end his talkathon, he did yield to take questions from others.

He added, “The executive branch should not be allowed to conduct such a serious and far-reaching program by themselves without any scrutiny, because that’s not how American democracy works.”

Mr. Paul again said his true goal was simply to get a response from the administration saying it would not use drone strikes to take out American citizens on United States soil and offered Mr. Holder a variety of ways to respond.

“We’ll take a telegram,” Mr. Paul said. “We’ll take a Tweet.”

If you are Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. and you would like to Tweet Senator Paul, you can do so here: @SenRandPaul

[Source: CSPAN.org]