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Sen. Rand Paul continued to drive momentum for criminal justice reform Wednesday, saying the greatest barrier to jobs and voting in the U.S. is a criminal record.

If we want to help people work and help people vote, weve got to fix the overcriminalization problem, Paul said before an intimate crowd during the Bipartisan Summit on Fair Justice hosted by the Coalition for Public Safety.

The Republican presidential hopeful advocated following Californias lead in dropping minor nonviolent felonies to misdemeanors so voting and employment opportunities are preserved for those who commit minor crimes.

Paul said the reduction also freed prison space in the states overcrowded system, allowing federal prosecutors to effectively detain violent felons for their entire sentences.

Overcrowding is the result of an explosion in the federal prison population since the 1980s, when politicians dropped a tsunami of harsh sentencing laws on the criminal justice system in a sweeping crime and drug crackdown.

The consequence was an 800 percent increase in the prison population over the past 30 years, with more than 208,000 people locked in federal prisons of which half are serving for nonviolent drug offenses.

Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates said during the event these numbers are driven largely by drug laws encompassing mandatory minimums that are not calibrated to match the crime to the sentence. She said this complicates the ability to distinguish punishment between a cartel leader and a low-level drug offender, eliciting steep human and financial costs.

The U.S. spends $80 billion a year on jails and prisons, a number that consumes one-third of the Department of Justices entire budget. Yates said this swallows funds that could be allocated to state and local law enforcement along with prevention and reentry programs in prisons.

Every dollar we spend on incarcerating the nonviolent, low-level drug offenders is a dollar that we cant spend on investigating and prosecuting the threats that we face today, she said.

Paul noted the emergence of 10 separate bipartisan bills in the Senate seeking reform to the criminal justice system, underscoring a growing movement to push something through the usually gridlocked Congress.

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Rand Paul: 'We've Got to Fix the Overcriminalization Problem'

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul is working on legislation to allow soldiers to carry guns on military bases, and could introduce it as soon as this week. That could establish him as a leader among conservatives who say last weeks massacre at a Chattanooga, Tennessee recruiting station should change how the military looks at the issue.

After Major [Nidal] Hasan did the shooting at Fort Hood, we did legislation on arming military on bases, said Paul, in a roundtable with reporters at his Washington, D.C campaign office. This was a recruiting station, right? Well, I would include recruiting stations. One of the weird things is that we have 15-20 states where you can open carry. So everybody can carry, except for the military? I think thats crazy. The rules that apply to everybody should at least apply to the military.

Paul, who was elected to the Senate a year after Hasans 2009 killing spree on the Texas military base, has long favored a policy shift that would allow guns on bases. His new bill may go even further than the versions that followed Fort Hood. In 2013, former Rep. Steve Stockman (R-Tex.) sponsored a Safe Military Bases Act, written to allow guns. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), one of Pauls rivals for the Republican Partys presidential nomination, has used his perch on the Armed Services Committee to ask for hearings on the gun policy.

The killings in Chattanooga have pushed the issue into overdrive. On Monday afternoon, the National Rifle Association called for military recruiters to be armed. In recent days, Republican frontrunners Donald Trump, Jeb Bush, and Scott Walker have all questioned the logic of the gun ban.

These [members of the military] are people who could have handled guns very easily, said Trump at a Republican fundraiser in Arkansas. They would have had a good chance if they had a gun.

Pauls commitment to gun rights has a stronger pedigree than Trumps. He is closely tied to the National Association for Gun Rights, a group that positions itself to the right of the NRA.

I think guns are a great deterrent anyway, Paul said on Monday. Ive also had bills, for a couple of years now, making it easier to arm pilots.

In the wake of Chattanooga, Paul has also criticized immigration laws, asking whether they are letting anti-American elements into the country. Im very concerned about immigration to this country from countries that have hotbeds of jihadism and hotbeds of this Islamism, he told Breitbart News reporter Matthew Boyle last week. Paul expanded on those comments Monday, recalling how he had wanted Rubios legislation i.e., the stillborn 2013 immigration reform bill to add screening for potential terrorists.

We wrote a letter to Harry Reid, saying we should slow the bill down, and have a discussion about putting the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System in, said Paul. It gave extra scrutiny to countries that had radical elements that were professing a desire to harm Americans or America. I dont think it has to say one religion or not, but I think you find out that most of the anti-American movements around the country do seem to be coming from predominately Islamic countries.

Pauls call for reform of NSEERS put the PATRIOT Acts biggest Republican critic in the rare position of endorsing an anti-terror policy enacted by George W. Bush.

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Rand Paul readying Hill push for guns on military bases ...

When Rand Paul began charting his presidential run, the Ray-Ban-wearing senator and heir apparent to a libertarian legacy rebranded himself to suit more mainstream Republican tastes.

He rejected his famous fathers isolationist foreign policy, voted for more military spending and even campaigned in front of an aircraft carrier. He invited a Christian broadcasting network into his home and spoke against gay marriage, famously pronouncing himself libertarian-ish.

But it turned out that Rand Paul 2.0 had a glitch: Appeal was limited.

After flatlining in the polls and lagging rivals in fundraising, Pauls campaign heeded a market lesson repeatedly applied in American politics. They brought back the original.

The Kentucky senator has pivoted back to his familiar stomping grounds among the outliers of Republican politics.

In May he infuriated some fellow Republicans by delivering a 10-hour speech to protest Patriot Act provisions on NSA domestic spying. Last month he became the first presidential candidate to openly court money from the legalized marijuana industry and shared a moment with Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, known for his standoff with federal agents in 2014 and for his divisive comments about minorities.

Out of necessity hes moving back to his base, which is a sign the strategy he adopted was the wrong strategy, said Aaron Day, chairman of the New Hampshire chapter of the Republican Liberty Caucus, a nationwide libertarian-leaning organization within the GOP. He needs the grass-roots and they know this now.

Rands campaign denied any rebooting of his message or positions, and insisted that he never intended to replicate the campaigns of his father, the former Texas GOP congressman and presidential candidate Ron Paul. There has been no change, no pivot, said campaign manager Chip Englander. He has the same view hes always had.

But as Paul tried to navigate a more crowd-pleasing course, he ended up in no-mans land, disappointing core activists while failing to generate enthusiasm from the partys mainstream.

The result left him on an island, said one strategist from a rival Republican campaign who did not want to be identified speaking about Paul. Hes played this footsie game with the establishment for so long and you can see him make this pivot back.

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After sagging in fundraising, Rand Paul 2.0 reboots ...

I grew up in Texas, I went to Brazoswood High School about an hour from here and I went to Baylor which is up in Wacoand actually one of the interviews I did on the radio on the way down here was with a guy I was part of Young Conservatives of Texas with, which a group that Steve Munisteri [the former Texas GOP chairman whos working for Pauls campaign now] founded and it was a break off of Young Americans for Freedom back in the 1970s, Paul said in an exclusive interview with Breitbart News right before he took the stage.

Its good to be here to reconnect with people and also spend a lot of time with my family as well. Being in Texas is greata lot of Republicans down here, a very red statebut to have 800 people for a rally is pretty good considering theres some other Texans in the race as well.

Paul, a U.S. Senator from Kentucky, grew up here in Texas and is one of many Texans in the 2016 GOP presidential primary. Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry is also running as is Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush was born and raised in Texas too.

Paul, a grassroots conservative candidate, took the stage inside downtown Houstons Hyatt Regency while local band The Guzzlers played hits like Brown Eyed Girl, Sweet Home Alabama, and other songs before introducing Paul as the next president of the United States.

Anyone here from the leave me alone coalition? Paul asked the crowd as he took the stage, to shouts of YEAH!

How about the leave me the hell alone coalition? Paul followed up to more cheers.

Justice Brandeis once said that the right most cherished by civilized men is the right to be left alone, Paul said. Yet in Washington, every day in every nook and cranny of your livesyour business life, your personal lifethe government wants to get a piece of you. What we need to do is shut down the Washington machine, and give you your freedom back.

Paul lit into every single high-profile member of the Washington establishment ranging from Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) to Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton while laying out how Washington, D.C., is a mess.

You have people in Washington do things that you would never, ever approve of, Paul said. Ill give you an idea. Does anybody here think its a good idea to borrow money from China to send it to Pakistan?

No! the crowd of several hundred people shouted resoundingly.

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Rand Paul Rallies Houston For Real National Security: We ...

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., waits to speak at a campaign stop on July 2, 2015, in Brooklyn, Iowa.(Photo: Charlie Neibergall, AP)

Breitbart News is reporting that GOP presidentialcandidate Rand Paul told one of itsreporters backstage ata speech in Houston last night that the U.S.should provide extra scrutiny of people coming into the countryfrompredominantly Muslim countries after the Chattanooga, Tenn.,terrorist attack on Friday.

"Im very concerned about immigration to this country from countries that have hotbeds of jihadism and hotbeds of this Islamism," Paul told Breitbart. "I think there does need to be heightened scrutiny. Nobody has a right to come to America, so this isnt something that we can say oh, their rights are being violated. Its a privilege to come to America and we need to thoroughly screen those who are coming."

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The alleged shooter in the Chattanooga incident --which claimed the lives of fiveU.S.Marines -- wasnamed Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez. The 24-year-old was born in Kuwait and immigrated to the U.S.

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Report: Rand Paul calls for scrutiny of Muslims