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The greatest trick any politician can pull off is to get his self-interest and his principles in perfect alignment. As Thomas More observed in Robert Bolt's "A Man for All Seasons," "If we lived in a State where virtue was profitable, common sense would make us good, and greed would make us saintly."

Which brings me to Sen. Rand Paul, the GOP's would-be Man for All Seasons. Paul emerged from the smoldering debris of the Republican health care-reform train wreck as a figure of high libertarian principle, the shining "no" vote on any compromise that came short of full repeal.

"Look, this is what we ran on for four elections," Paul told Neil Cavuto of Fox News. "Republicans ran four times and won every time on repeal Obamacare, and now they're going to vote to keep it. Disappointing."

I found many of Paul's arguments and complaints entirely persuasive on the merits. But there have been times when I had to wonder if the merits were all that was driving him.

Was it just a coincidence that the bill was terribly unpopular in his home state of Kentucky, where more than one in five Kentuckians are on Medicaid?

This is the problem. When touting your principles is a politically expedient way of avoiding accountability, it's hard to tell whether principles or expedience is in the driver's seat. But not impossible.

Paul learned politics on the knee of his father, Ron Paul, a longtime Texas congressman and irrepressible presidential candidate. In the House, the elder Paul earned the nickname "Dr. No" because he voted against nearly everything on the grounds that it wasn't constitutional or libertarian enough.

"I'm absolutely for free trade, more so than any other member of the House," he told National Review's John Miller in 2007. "But I'm against managed trade."

So Paul opposed the Central American Free Trade Agreement and all other trade deals, not on Trumpian protectionist grounds but in service to his higher libertarian conscience, which, in a brilliant pas de deux, landed him in the protectionist position anyway.

Ron Paul loved earmarks. He'd cram pork for his district into must-pass spending bills like an overstuffed burrito and then vote against them in the name of purity, often boasting that he never approved an earmark or a spending bill.

In 2006, Republicans proposed legislation to slow the growth of entitlements by $40 billion over five years. Democrats, as usual, screamed bloody murder about Republican heartlessness and voted against it. And so did Ron Paul on the grounds the reform didn't go far enough. Man, that sounds familiar.

Now I can't say for sure that Rand Paul is carrying on the family tradition. He is different from his dad in many ways.

And yet: Every time health-care proceedings moved one step in Paul's direction, he seemed to move one step back. Sen. Ted Cruz offered an amendment that would open up the market for more flexible and affordable plans, like Paul wanted. No good, Paul told Fox's Chris Wallace. Those plans would still be in the "context" of the Obamacare mandates.

"My idea always was to replace it with freedom, legalize choice, legalize inexpensive insurance, allow people to join associations to buy their insurance," Paul said.

Sounds good. Except a provision for exempting associations from Obamacare mandates was already in the bill.

Paul insists he's sympathetic to the GOP's plight and its need to avoid a midterm catastrophe. (It would look awful if the party did nothing on health care at all.) His solution? Just repeal Obamacare now, and work on a replacement later. "I still think the entire 52 of us could get together on a more narrow, clean repeal," he told Wallace.

That sounds like a constructive idea, grounded in principle.

And yet: That's what GOP leaders wanted to do back in January. And one senator more than any other fought to stop them, and even successfully lobbied the White House to change course and do repeal-and-replace simultaneously. Guess who?

"If Congress fails to vote on a replacement at the same time as repeal," Paul wrote back then, "the repealers risk assuming the blame for the continued unraveling of Obamacare. For mark my words, Obamacare will continue to unravel and wreak havoc for years to come."

In the wake of the Senate bill's collapse this week, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says he's all for a clean repeal, and so does Rand Paul. For now.

Jonah Goldberg is a senior editor of National Review. Email him at goldbergcolumn@gmail.com.

Excerpt from:
Rand Paul elusive on health care: Jonah Goldberg - GoErie.com

Republican Sen. Rand Paul sided with President Trump on Thursday after the commander-in-chief criticized Attorney General Jeff Sessions decision to recuse himself from the Russia investigation.

Paul, R-Ky., tweeted Thursday morning:

I agree with @realDonaldTrump, his Attorney General should not have recused himself over reported incidental contacts with Russian officials.

The tweet comes after the president told The New York Times that the attorney generals recusal was very unfair to the president.

How do you take a job and then recuse yourself? Trump said, slamming Sessions. If he would have recused himself before the job, I would have said, Thanks. Jeff, but Im not going to take you.'

The libertarian-leaning Paul went on to take a shot at Sessions over a separate policy move a day earlier -- tweeting his concerns about the DOJ's shift on what's known as asset forfeiture.

SESSIONS OPENS DOOR FOR POLICE TO SEIZE ASSETS, FACES GOP PUSHBACK

What Im most concerned about though is the Attorney Generals actions yesterday to push forward with federal asset forfeiture, Paul tweeted.

He added, Asset forfeiture is an unconstitutional taking of property without trial. Its wrong and I call on the AG and Administration to stop.

Pauls comments come after Sessions ordered the expansion of the governments ability to seize suspects propertya move that put him at odds with Republicans who have slammed the practice as a violation of civil rights.

Sessions touted the use of asset forfeiture as a key tool for law enforcement and said it weakens criminal organizations and the cartel.

Fox News Barnini Chakraborty contributed to this report.

Brooke Singman is a Reporter for Fox News. Follow her on Twitter at @brookefoxnews.

Read more:
Rand Paul sides with Trump on Sessions slam - Fox News

The goal is to remove what critics of the criminal justice system call an unfair disadvantage for poor people and people of color, who reportedly pay disproportionately higher amounts for bail.

Nationally, African American men pay 35 percent higher money bail amounts than white men, and Hispanic men pay 19 percent higher money bail amounts than white men, part of the Harris-Paul bill reads. The individuals who would be exempt from bail are described as low-risk individuals awaiting criminal trials.

The bill continues:

Money bail systems have resulted in disparate harms to poor people and communities of 12 color. Studies have shown that African American 13 and Hispanic defendants are more likely to be detained pretrial than white defendants and less likely to be able to post money bail so they can be released. Moreover, race and money bail amounts are significantly correlated.

The concern is that individuals earning lower wages are not able to pay bail, which could result in them losing their jobs, having their cars towed, and possibly losing their children.

Critics and opponents of the legislation include bail bonds companies and public safety organizations.

Harris, in a written statement announcing the bill, reportedlysaid, In our country, whether you stay in jail or not is wholly determined by whether youre wealthy or not and thats wrong. We must come together to reform a bail system that is discriminatory, wasteful, and fails to keep our communities safe.

Americans deserve fair and equal treatment under the law regardless of how much money is in their pockets or how many connections they have, Paul said, according to theSan Francisco Chronicle.

According toBay Area public radio station KQED, Harris and Pauls bill estimates that 450,000 people are incarcerated in the U.S. without having been convicted of a crime, and while awaiting trial.

The bill seeks to distribute$10 million between stateand tribal court systems in order to replace the use of bail with risk-based decision making that includes objective, research-based, and locally-validated assessment tools that do not result in unwarranted disparities.

In April, Duane Dog Chapman, known for his show Dog the Bounty Hunter appeared in the Assembly Public Safety Committee hearing to testify against similar legislation.

Adelle Nazarian is a politics and national security reporter for Breitbart News. Follow her onFacebookandTwitter.

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Rand Paul Teams Up With Kamala Harris for Bail Reform - Breitbart News

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) came to President Donald Trumps defense on Thursday.

In an interview in theNew York TimesWednesday, Trump told the paper he would not have hired Jeff Sessions as attorney general if he knew that Sessions would ultimately recuse himself from the Department of Justices Russia investigation.

You know, I think the President has a point, because the thing here isif everybody is going to recuse themselves just for incidental contact, I think you dont get really good governance, Paulsaid in an interview on Fox and Friends, the Presidents favored morning news show. I believe that Jeff Sessions contact with the Russians was incidental. In the usual duties of being in Senate, and it being incidental, he should have stayed in the fray and been more supportive of the President.

Paulwent on to rail against Sessions for his actions enforcing asset forfeiture policy, which he says gives the attorney general the power to disproportionately take property from minority and low-income people.

I think we shouldnt take peoples property without conviction. This is something I believe very strongly in, and Im disappointed that Sessions is going after a lot of poor minorities to take their property without due process, he said.

Read more here:
Rand Paul Agrees With Trump: Sessions Shouldn't Have Recused Himself - TPM

Meanwhile, black and Latino defendants are more likely to be detained before trial and less likely to be able to post bail compared with similarly situated white defendants. In fact, black and Latino men respectively pay 35 percent and 19 percent higher bail than white men.

This isnt just unjust. It also wastes taxpayer dollars. People awaiting trial account for 95 percent of the growth in the jail population from 2000 to 2014, and it costs roughly $38 million every day to imprison these largely nonviolent defendants. That adds up to $14 billion a year.

Bail is supposed to ensure that the accused appear at trial and dont commit other offenses in the meantime. But research has shown that low-risk defendants who are detained more than 24 hours and then released are actually less likely to show up in court than those who are detained less than a day.

It is especially troubling that our bail system does not keep us safer. In a study of two large jurisdictions, nearly half of the defendants considered high risk were released simply because they could afford to post bail.

Our bail system is broken. And its time to fix it.

Thats why were introducing the Pretrial Integrity and Safety Act to encourage states to reform or replace the bail system.

This should not be a partisan issue.

First, our legislation empowers states to build on best practices. Kentucky and New Jersey, for instance, have shifted from bail toward personalized risk assessments that analyze factors such as criminal history and substance abuse. These are better indicators of whether a defendant is a flight risk or a threat to the public and ought to be held without bail.

Colorado and West Virginia have improved pretrial services and supervision, such as using telephone reminders so fewer defendants miss court dates and end up detained.

These nudges work. Over the second half of 2006, automated phone call reminders in Multnomah County in Oregon, resulted in 750 people showing up in court who otherwise may have forgotten their date.

Instead of the federal government mandating a one-size-fits-all approach, this bill provides Department of Justice grants directly to the states so each can devise and carry out the most effective policies, tailored for its unique needs.

Enabling states to better institute such reforms also honors one of our nations core documents, the Bill of Rights. In drafting the Eighth Amendment, which prohibits excessive bail, the founders sought to protect people from unchecked government power in the criminal justice system.

Second, our bill holds states accountable. Any state receiving support must report on its progress and make sure that reforms like risk assessments are not discriminatory through analyses of trends and data. This will show that its possible to demand transformation, transparency and fairness.

Finally, this bill encourages better data collection. Data on the pretrial process is notoriously sparse. By collecting information on how state and local courts handle defendants, we can help guarantee that reforms yield better outcomes.

The Pretrial Justice Institute, an organization that works to change unfair and unjust pretrial practices, estimates that bail reform could save American taxpayers roughly $78 billion a year. More important, it would help restore Americans faith in our justice system.

See original here:
Kamala Harris and Rand Paul: To Shrink Jails, Let's Reform Bail - New York Times