Jacob Sullum on Rand Paul’s Challenge to Conservatives Who Reflexively Support Law Enforcement

Running for the U.S. Senate in 2010, Rand Paul
became known as that crazy right-winger who expressed reservations
about the Civil Rights Act of 1964. But in the last two years, the
Kentucky Republican has emerged as his party’s most passionate
voice on criminal justice reform, explicitly decrying the
system’s disproportionate impact on African Americans.

You might assume that Paul, widely seen as a contender for the
2016 Republican presidential nomination, is trying to redeem
himself with black voters who were alienated by his criticism of
the Civil Rights Act. Yet both positions spring from the same
wariness of state power, Jacob Sullum writes, citing the
senator’s recent comments on the over-the-top police response
to the unrest that followed the fatal shooting of an unarmed black
teenager in Ferguson, Missouri.

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