Side Note

Rand Paul is mad as hell about sexed-up, coked-out quails

I don’t really get Rand Paul. Like, he’s supposed to be the “Libertarian” Republican Senator because thinks weed should be legal and really hates the Patriot Act, but it kind of just seems like he’s a run-of-the-mill Republican whose dad happens to be Ron Paul? While it’s true that he’s the Republican Senator most likely to disagree with Donald Trump on legislative matters according to data compiled by ProPublica and 538, he still votes with the Trump camp 74% of the time — vastly more than even the most Trump-friendly Democrat — so it’s not like he’s some third-party maverick. Not to mention, he filed federal charges against his neighbor for tackling him off his lawnmower (Paul was apparently spraying grass clippings into the neighbor’s yard), and though I’m no legal scholar, I’m pretty sure that calling the cops on your neighbor over a property dispute is the opposite of libertarianism.

Anyways, Rand Paul is not a real Libertarian, but he loves pretending to be one by getting mad about silly-sounding government expenses. His favorite punching bag seems to be a years-old study by the National Institute of Health where researchers studied the sexual habits of quails on cocaine. Paul has tweeted about the study multiple times, as if a few hundred thousand bucks spent observing coked-out quail sex is somehow more offensive than allowing auto lenders to discriminate against their customers or taking away an individual’s right to sue their employer (both of which, to be clear, are things Paul is in favor of, according to his voting record).

Anyways, Paul spoke to a local Fox affiliate earlier this month about his hatred of the cocaine quail sex study, and, in case all the real Rand Paul Heads hadn’t heard him crowing about quails, he mysteriously issued a press release about his local news interview a week after the spot came out. And so, as companies monitor us like hawks, the Supreme Court sits on the sidelines of criminal justice issues, and climate change causes weather events that require massive amounts of federal spending — all of which are issues of individual freedom that Libertarians should be able to get behind — Rand Paul focuses on an arbitrary, arbitrary issue that makes it seem like he’s against Big Government but is in fact pointless.

If Rand Paul were a true Libertarian, he would let the quails fuck in peace.