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I confess I always had mixed feelings about Rand Paul. The Kentucky senator is clearly a smart guy but his brand of libertarianism seemedbetter on paper than in real life. Moreover, his constant warnings about privacy and the excessive power of our overweening intelligence agencies felt overwrought. I assumed those agencies had their hands full withISIS et al. and that it bordered on the paranoid worrying abouttheir cooperating with our own government leaders in domestic spying. If anything was unAmerican, that was. And it was illegal.

Boy, was I wrong.

As events continue to evolve in the Susan Rice "unmasking" scandal, my hat's off to Rand. He's my new hero, out there demanding Rice testify andwondering whythe former national security adviserwas doing investigating that normally wouldhave been done by the FBI.

Another hero is Lee Smith, whosearticle in Tablet is positively blood-curdling. After reminding us of what we already know -- that Rice's "unmasking" of Trump teammates in and of itself is not a crime, even if unseemly -- Smithadds:

In a December 29, 2015article,TheWall Street Journaldescribed how the Obama administration had conducted surveillance on Israeli officials to understand how Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli officials, like Ambassador Ron Dermer, intended to fight the Iran Deal. TheJournalreported that the targeting also swept up the contents of some of their private conversations with U.S. lawmakers and American-Jewish groups.

Despite this reporting, it seemed inconceivable at the time thatgiven myriad legal, ethical, political, and historical concerns, as well as strict National Security Agency protocols that protect the identity of American names caught in interceptsthe Obama White House would have actually spied on American citizens. In a December 31, 2016, Tabletarticleon the controversy, Why the White House Wanted Congress to Think It Was Being Spied on By the NSA, I argued that the Obama administration had merely used theappearanceof spying on American lawmakers to corner opponents of the Iran Deal. Spying on U.S. citizens would be a clear abuse of the foreign-intelligence surveillance system. It would be a felony offense to leak the names of U.S. citizens to the press.

Increasingly, I believe that my conclusion in that piece was wrong. I believe the spying was real and that it was done not in an effort to keep the country safe from threatsbut in order to help the White House fight their domestic political opponents.

Smith goes on to show how Obama & Co. essentially weaponized the NSA's legitimate monitoring of foreign officials -- in thiscase Israelis -- to gain the administration's ends (i. e. tarnish Jewish-Americans in opposition to the Iran Deal for having "dual loyalties" in order to weaken opposition to thedeal).

More here:
Rand Paul's Day in the Sun - PJ Media