Rand strikes back: Today's news for St. Patrick's Day

RealClearPolitics:

Rand Paul Responds to John McCain: 

Senator From Arizona Is "Unhinged" and "Past His Prime"

Senator Rand Paul response to Senator John McCain's allegation that Paul was "working for Vladimir Putin" when Paul would not vote for allowing Montenegro into NATO:

You know, I think [McCain] makes a really, really strong case for term limits. I think maybe he's past his prime; I think maybe he's gotten a little bit unhinged.

I do think that when we talk about NATO, there can be a rational discussion about the pros and cons of expanding it. We currently have troops, combat troops, in about six nations. We have troops actively just stationed in probably a couple dozen others. We have a $20 trillion debt. And one of my favorite articles of the last couple years is one that talked about the angry McCains, and if they -- if we put active troops and got involved in combat where McCain wants us to be, they put a little angry McCain on the globe, on the map. And it's virtually everywhere. So his foreign policy is something that would greatly endanger the United States, greatly overextend us. And there has to be the thought whether or not it's in our national interest to pledge to get involved with a war if Montenegro has an altercation with anyone.

...I think that there is a bipartisan consensus that's incorrect that we should have the whole world be in NATO. For example, if we had Ukraine and Georgia in NATO -- and this is something McCain and the other neocons have advocated for -- we would be at war now because Russia has invaded both of them.

And so I think having former satellites or former parts of the Soviet Union is NATO is very provocative. And you have to decide in advance whether you're ready go to war. If you guys are ready to send a million troops into Ukraine and fight World War III, you're going to do it without my support because I think that's a really foolish notion. 

Rand Paul is not only correct, but he also makes a stellar case that we have a bipartisan consensus for starting a war with Russia.

Speaking of Russia...

Business Insider:

Mike Flynn was paid by Russia's top cybersecurity firm 

while he still had top-secret-level security clearance

Retired Gen. Michael Flynn was paid $11,250 by Russia's top cybersecurity firm, Kaspersky, in 2015, according to new documents obtained and published by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on Thursday. Flynn was also paid $11,250 by the Russian charter cargo airline Volga-Dnepr Airlines, according to the documents.

Flynn was paid for his work with both companies while he still had top-secret-level security clearance, a year after he was fired as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, The Wall Street Journal's Shane Harris reported.

Kaspersky said in a statement provided to Business Insider that the company had "paid Gen. Flynn a speaker fee for remarks at the 2015 Government Cybersecurity Forum in Washington, DC."

...Flynn — who was forced to resign as national security adviser in early February after he misled Vice President Mike Pence about his phone calls with the Russian ambassador to the US, Sergey Kislyak — was also paid $33,750 to speak at a gala celebrating the 10th anniversary of Russia's state-sponsored news agency, Russia Today, in December 2015.

The problem with this "Russian connection" is the simple fact there are 18 items on that page (there may have been more that were not shown), and it only talks about 3 of them. Are we also assuming Flynn had something illicit going on with the other 15 speaking engagements?

Flynn was retired from the government at the time. This is no worse than Hillary Clinton collecting speaking fees after she left her position as secretary of state. When you are out of work, you take any paying jobs you can.