In years past, Felton kept detailed iCal notes and ran various experiments, from Internet surveys to a deep analysis of his late father’s past. This year, he partnered up with a friend, Drew Breunig, to code an iPhone app called Reporter that would simplify the life recording process. Every 90 minutes, the app buzzes Felton--automatically snagging his coordinates while asking him the same questions: Where are you? Who are you with? What are you wearing? How productive were you today (on a scale of 1-5)?
I'm not talking about punk-rock music, because I don't believe there is such a thing. Punk music is just rock music, and the best punk is halfway decent rock. Punk rock was nothing new in 1976, and it's nothing new today. The Beatles' cover of "Roll Over Beethoven" is more punk than 90 percent of all punk rock; the Ramones were way more conservative—musically and socially—than Sha Na Na; the Sex Pistols were just dumb David Bowie; The Clash was a world-music band and the direct antecedent of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. If anything, the mantle of "punk rock" was an umbrella to describe a reactionary retro-ness, a feeling that music was best played with old-fashioned dumb energy, simple to the point of being simplistic—which not coincidentally corresponded to the period of the widest proliferation of recreational drug use in world history. It was music to validate being too wasted to think.
What I'm talking about is "punk rock" as a political stance, punk rock as a social movement, punk rock as a fashion trend, punk rock as a personal lifestyle brand, and punk rock as a lens of critical appraisal. The shadow of punk rock has eclipsed countless new dawns under its fundamental negativity and its lazy equation of rejection with action.
Paul was talking about something that’s a far-off hypothetical when the reality of killing American citizens with drones has already happened, and the Obama Administration has repeatedly dodged Congressional oversight of the drone program. Paul’s stunt wasn’t aimed at addressing either of those substantive issues. Instead, he was, as is typical of the true glibertarian, chasing a dark shadow in a corner while ignoring what was obvious to all in the bright sunshine. The reason is simple: the people who write Paul checks are fine with killing brown Muslim Americans in a far-off land, and are irrationally afraid of a black president sending a Hellfire missile down their chimney.
Paul chose to filibuster the nomination of the head of the CIA, even though he stated repeatedly that his concern was the killing of Americans on American soil… The place to protest that is when the defense and intelligence appropriation bills come to the floor. At that point, Paul could filibuster until an amendment was added to the bill to compel the Administration to release more information on drone killings, at a minimum, or to require specific authorizations of force before drones are used in any foreign country… But that would be possibly effective and certainly risky to Paul’s electoral future, so instead he filibustered Brennan... If Paul would threaten the drone program in a way that could actually change the drone program, then shit would get real on the Senate floor very quickly.
This was a real talking filibuster. And as I said earlier today, three cheers for it. It’s a good safety valve and it is self-correcting. Making filibusters visible like this does nothing to diminish the power of the filibuster and would preserve it as a robust minority right. It would be something that could be maintained for long periods of time if substantial numbers of the minority supported it. But it would be far, far less open to abuse than the current system of an accountability-free ability to block majority votes at will precisely because of its visibility. (See my argument on why here.)