That Mountain Got In The Way Of My Golf Course

Rand Paul, bringing teh crazy:

Paul believes mountaintop removal just needs a little rebranding. “I think they should name it something better,” he says. “The top ends up flatter, but we’re not talking about Mount Everest. We’re talking about these little knobby hills that are everywhere out here. And I’ve seen the reclaimed lands. One of them is 800 acres, with a sports complex on it, elk roaming, covered in grass.” Most people, he continues, “would say the land is of enhanced value, because now you can build on it.”

“Let’s let you decide what to do with your land,” he says. “Really, it’s a private-property issue.” This is a gentler, more academic variation on a line he used the evening before, during his speech at the Harlan Center: “If you don’t live here, it’s none of your business.” It’s the kind of catchphrase that may serve him well in Kentucky, where he has remained steadily ahead of Jack Conway in polls, even after the Rachel Maddow incident. (The small size of Kentucky’s African-American population—just seven percent—may have softened his comments’ impact back home.) Barring, or maybe not barring, any further philosophical tangents, Rand Paul seems poised to enter the United States Senate, where he’ll bring the ideological zeal inherent in that mantra—”If you don’t live here, it’s none of your business”—to 99-to-1 votes, as well as 51-to-49 ones.

Rand Paul, consistently crazy.