Paul, Lee & Cruz

[Draggingtree]

National Review:

 

Senators Rand Paul, Mike Lee, and Ted Cruz

 

Paul, Lee & Cruz

Three young senators have emerged as key defenders of liberty and the Constitution.

 

By Andrew Stiles March 11, 2013 4:00 A.M.

 

When a staffer texted Senator Mike Lee that his friend and colleague Rand Paul was mounting a talking filibuster to demand greater transparency on the administration’s drone policy, Lee did not hesitate. “I alerted my staff that I would need to be going to the floor,” he says in an interview.

 

Lee was the first of Paul’s Republican colleagues to formally join the filibuster, providing some relief by delivering a speech in support. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas would soon follow,

of the tremendous outpouring of public support on social media, saying “the Twitter-verse . . . has been exploding.”

 

It happened to be Cruz’s first time speaking on the Senate floor. So-called “maiden speeches” are typically well-choreographed affairs (Marco Rubio waited more than six months after being sworn in to deliver his), but Cruz wouldn’t have had it any other way. He says it was “a particular privilege” to have his first floor speech come “in the course of a filibuster defending the Constitution.”