Rand Paul’s challenge

Paintball guns at 20 paces?

The cheap macho of Red-team politicians is pretty damned funny. The seriously andreia-challenged Rand Paul just challenged Rachel Maddow to a duel.

I think Maddow should accept. As the challenged party, the choice of weapons is hers. Paintball guns at 20 paces?

Of course, she could challenge him to a battle of wits, on her own show, but duelling armed against an unarmed man is unsporting.

Author: Mark Kleiman

Professor of Public Policy at the NYU Marron Institute for Urban Management and editor of the Journal of Drug Policy Analysis. Teaches about the methods of policy analysis about drug abuse control and crime control policy, working out the implications of two principles: that swift and certain sanctions don't have to be severe to be effective, and that well-designed threats usually don't have to be carried out. Books: Drugs and Drug Policy: What Everyone Needs to Know (with Jonathan Caulkins and Angela Hawken) When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment (Princeton, 2009; named one of the "books of the year" by The Economist Against Excess: Drug Policy for Results (Basic, 1993) Marijuana: Costs of Abuse, Costs of Control (Greenwood, 1989) UCLA Homepage Curriculum Vitae Contact: Markarkleiman-at-gmail.com

14 thoughts on “Rand Paul’s challenge”

  1. Dueling armed against an unarmed man is unsporting if you initiate the duel.

    If he challenges you, and then shows up at the duel unarmed … c’est la guerre.

  2. The “if dueling were legal” bit is just another way of saying “I’m too much of a coward to threaten to kick your ass, because you might take me up on it and then I’d be in deep trouble.”

  3. Rachel Maddow gets to pick the weapons and I think she should pick dictionaries, counter with a debate. Proceeds go to Fisher House.

  4. When thinking about Rand Paul, ignore what he is ashamed of and would rather never have to deal with. Pay attention to what he is proud of; that is what makes him dangerous. He is ashamed of having a speechwriter cite a Wikipedia description of a science fiction movie; no harm there. He is proud of the Southern heritage of honor and the fighting of duels to defend it. He will be prepared to go to war if, as President, he feels the meanest slight to national honor from any source in the world. Big time harm there.

  5. It’s amusing that he thinks dueling was a proud and now sadly lost tradition in Kentucky when the state Constitution places a high priority on denigrating the practice. I mean, obviously the Constitution wouldn’t have bothered if it went an issue people cared about, but I thought Paul’s bunch valued the importance of founding documents?

    1. Whip, forgot to once again laboriously type in my identity. Is there a reason this isn’t getting fixed?

      1. If you’re using Firefox, double-clicking on the name text box should give you a list to pick from of all of your previously used sockpuppets. 🙂

        1. Also in Chrome (on my PC). But it’s when I’m lounging around the house with my iPad that I tend to lapse. I know, I know - hardly a tragic tale. Nonetheless, it is the small irritations that vex.

  6. Turns out he plagiarized three entire pages of his book verbatim from a Heritage Foundation report.

    And his reaction to this verifiable lying and dishonesty? “I’d like to shoot my accusers.”

    1. Heritage reports are intended to have big blocks copied and pasted by lawmakers. If the author would prefer to be quoted without attribution, it’s hard for me to call it “plagiarism”.

      (This is not to defend Sen. Paul, but to deplore a dubious practice by Heritage.)

      1. The question is whether you think the wronged party in a case of plagiarism is the original writer(s) or the deceived reader. Cribbing a few pages from Heritage isn’t the former (as you note, they’re not offended), but it remains the latter. Paul claimed an effort and an erudition not his own. Surely that’s plagiarism?

        1. I don’t think Paul was claiming any erudition. It’s hard to imagine the voters of Kentucky sent him to Washington to do his own writing. For that matter, I don’t assume any Senator has the time to do his own writing.

  7. The duel is over even before it began. According to the NYT, Paul has apparently conceded that he is a serial plagerist. http://nyti.ms/18WIuO5 In other words, he has a self-inflicted “dueling scar.”

    Of course, the line in the NYT article that I like the best is when Paul says that “he would happily return to his Kentucky doctor’s practice.” As I have detailed in comment threads pertaining to Paul on this blog, he is no longer board certified either by the real board of ophthalmology or by his faux and now extinct “board.” (For those who have missed it, if you go back to these comments, you will find links to the pdfs of records of the Kentucky Secretary of State, Corporations Division which fully support the foregoing statements.)

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