Denounces Obama’s continual bypassing of Congress
by Steve Watson
Infowars.com
Appearing on Infowars Nightly News Wednesday, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul said that he fears the international police agency Interpol has been granted too much authority to operate without oversight in the United States.
Paul suggested that new powers granted to Interpol by president Obama could see U.S. citizens arrested or even extradited by the agency under foreign laws.
“I’m kind of concerned about having an international police force in our country with the ability, maybe, to extradite US citizens and send them to another country.” The Senator said.
“Egypt, as you know over the last few months has been holding some American pro-Democracy workers in their country and they were going to try them on trumped up political charges. So a couple of months ago I said ‘you know what, we send two billion dollars to a country that treats us this way?’ So I tried to hold up their foreign aid, and as a consequence, part of what I was doing, they released our American citizens.”
“Then they came home and Secretary Clinton went and released their aid. I wrote her a letter and said she shouldn’t do it because these prosecutions were still ongoing.” The Senator said.
“They also made the U.S. taxpayer pay a five million dollar ransom for these Americans to come home, promising they would come back to stand trial. But this week we have learned that Egypt has asked Interpol for a national warrant, they have these red letter warrants, that can be used anywhere in the world.”
The Senator has also penned a letter to the president regarding the matter this week.
“Most people say ‘that could never happen inAmerica, we would never let that happen’, but Interpol is doing this in other countries.” Paul noted.
“Saudi Arabia ask Interpol to return a Saudi journalist from Malaysia, who had said something about Mohammed that they had found offensive, and they were going to accuse him of blasphemy.” The Senator added.
“Interpol picked him up in Malaysia and took him back to Saudi Arabia. He will now face the death penalty. But the scary thing is he is being picked up by Interpol. What kind of authority does Interpol have in the United States?”
The Senator pointed out that it was Obama who granted Interpol immunity to operate by way of Executive Order 12425, adding an amendment altering restrictions on other Governmental agencies to the limits the US Constitution.
Paul then spoke more generally regarding the administration increasingly attempting to bypass the Congress on important matters.
“One of the interactions in the last couple of weeks, it was very very telling,” said Paul, “was the interaction between Senator Sessions and Secretary Panetta in a committee, in which Panetta said that if we go to war, of course we’ll consult with the UN and get their approval. Sessions asked him ‘isn’t there a role here under the constitution for Congress?’ And Panetta basically just kept going on about NATO, the UN, and then he finally said ‘we would probably inform Congress of what we are doing, but never in there was there any understanding that they had to get approval or permission from Congress.”
When asked what could be done about such attempts to skirt Congress, the Senator cut straight to the point.
“I think the first thing is to try and stop him in his tracks.” Paul said.
“We tried very hard on the Libya motion. In fact, when he went to war in Libya we introduced his own words from 2007 when he ran for office and said that no president should unilaterally go to war without Congressional authority, which basically just re-states the Constitution.”
“And then he went around and did exactly the opposite when he became president. And this is not the first time a Democrat or a Republican has changed their mind once they became president, they believe in limitations on presidential power until they actually become president.”
The Senator spoke at length regarding other issues including moves to control and censor the internet, the backlash against the TSA, and his father’s ongoing campaign, and the rumors of him being nominated as a candidate for Vice President.
