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Sen. Rand Paul appears to be inching closer to helping GOP leaders get a healthcare bill over a procedural hurdle, The Hill reported.

The Kentucky Republican told reporters he'd support a motion to proceed to the House-passed healthcare bill the vehicle being used for action in the Senate if he could get a deal on amendments, including one on a "clean repeal."

"If they want my vote, they have to at least agree that we're going to at least have a vote on clean repeal," he said, The Hill reported.

He suggested he'd be on board of Senate leaders guarantee votes on some of the most prominent healthcare proposals from the GOP including repeal-only, repeal-and-replace and a bill created by Sens. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and Susan Collins of Maine.

"I think they're pretty equal in support," he said, The Hill reported. "Let's do a random selection. Let's have three or four of them, put them in random order, the first day, equal billing. I think that's a compromise. I'm willing to get on the bill."

Senators are expected to hold a procedural vote Tuesday.

Paul has been a unequivocal "no" vote on the GOP's healthcare bill, and GOP leaders could get a boost if Paul were to come over to the "yes" side, and at least debate healthcare legislation.

"Up front we have a vote on clean repeal, and maybe [the Better Care Reconciliation Act], and maybe Collins-Cassidy. I think the major proposals could be put at the very front. We debate them on the first day," he said.

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Rand Paul: I Want a 'Clean Repeal' Amendment on Healthcare Bill

William Shatner at FreedomFest 2017 in Las Vegas Friday night. Credit: Emile Doak/The American Conservative

Is there a free mind? Are our minds free? Are we programmed by something up there to follow our fate? Or are we programmed by Mom and Dad at a very early age? So is there free will? Do we make choices?

So wondered William Shatner during his July 21 speech at the annual Las Vegas convention of libertarians and other free-marketeers called FreedomFest. He urged the audience to stick to its principles, not compromise as he says he did when he directed Star Trek V by giving up on his original vision of having the real God attack the crew with an army of lava men in the films climax.

Compromising principles is a mistake, suggested Shatner. Nobody can tell you what to do. Somewhere inside us is a core.

Is William Shatner a libertarian, you might ask? If not, whats he doing there? Well, it seems more like hes an environmentalist worried about overpopulationand hes a Canadian, of coursebut hes also expressed some populist longings for someone to sweep away the bureaucrats and make American democracy work again. And he avoids commenting on Donald Trump. Maybe call Shatner a frustrated technocratic populist? Sounds like sort of a Reform Party guy to me, leavened by an inevitable Star Trek-veteran love of science and education.

None of this makes him too much weirder than a previous FreedomFest speaker who went on to bigger things, namely Donald Trump. I suppose the question is how big you want the libertarian tent to be. You probably want a tent big enough to let in optimists who still believe we can invent and build things, but not a tent so big that it lets all the carny-barkers inside. A friend of mine in Colorado reports seeing someone flying around downtown Denver with a jetpack a couple weeks ago, so we know futuristic technological progress is officially going strong, but I worry more about unrealistic promises in politics these days.

I noticed some people joking online that theyd love to hear Shatner tell the assembled libertarians to get a life in the fashion of his notorious 1986 Saturday Night Live sketch about obsessive Trekkie conventioneers. I probably would have laughed harder at that joke myself a decade or two ago, when it seemed that the worst thing that could happen to the libertarian movement is that it might get too screechy and radical and alienate mainstream Americans. Everybody relax, I would have thought.

Nowadays, I worry more that in American politics, even the most radical road always leads back to the same mushy centrist middle, with a few highly predictable TV pundits guarding that middle against the emergence of any truly new ideas. So, if Shatner is unlikely to express a precise, coherent philosophical argument, I should at least root for him to leave crowds slightly confused, even if he says something stupid. That can spur thought. It beats sticking to safely-ambiguous, nigh-universal sentiments that are deployed as if to build coalitions but are really used mainly to make the speaker himself seem as non-threatening as possible, often boosting his career without doing much to shore up the hypothetical broader coalition. Absent utopian unanimity, one should root for competition, always.

Im beginning to feel the same way about fictional continuity in Star Trek, to my surprise.

A sci-fi geek, I have been as eager as anyone over the years to see massive fictional continuities like that of the Star Trek universe or the DC Comics universe kept perfectly consistent. Inevitably, though, things fall apart eventually. New writers and new producers like Star Trek/Star Wars director J.J. Abrams come along and cavalierly decide theres a certain scene they want to depict or a character they want to bring back, and out goes the whole timestream as were asked to pretend vast swaths of prior fictional history never happened. I used to think this process was as heartbreaking as watching footage of the old Penn Station being demolished.

But there comes a point when you realize that the hope of maintaining a consistent continuityor a large political coalitionis probably rooted in a misguided optimism. The editors are too busy to care about all the details, and the politicians and most popular pundits are too busy or corrupt to care about philosophical purity. So, then the disappointed idealist starts to root for chaos. Perhaps thats a little of what happened in November 2016.

Let my fellow libertarians fight viciously and devolve into factions (pausing to enjoy the occasional near-meaningless Shatner speech or other entertainment). Like small and decentralized states, the factionalism might afford a better chance for truth to survive out there somewhere than would one bland, homogeneous consensus version of the philosophy with all the rough edges polished and gleaming.

And if the new Star Trek: Discovery TV series comes out this fall and has a throwaway line in it suggesting that this timeline may replace both the Abrams films and all the TV material we know from the 60s and 90s, well, now Im okay with that possibility, too. I am preemptively embracing that anarchic conclusion before the monarchShatnerhas a chance to insult us all again. Let a hundred Omicron Ceti III flowers bloom.

In Vegas terms, until we really hit the jackpot, Im grateful so long as we can keep rolling the dice.

Todd Seavey is the author of Libertarianism for Beginners. He writes for SpliceToday.com and can be found on Twitter at @ToddSeavey.

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Is Star Trek Icon William Shatner a Libertarian? - The American Conservative

Sen. John Cornyn counts Attorney General Jeff Sessions as one of his best friends in Washington, and their wives are even closer, making the couples regular double-date partners.

We occasionally get together to break bread, the Senate majority whip said Wednesday. One of those double dates came recently enough that Cornyn (R-Tex.) and Sessions could not avoid the elephant in the room: President Trumps public taunting of his attorney general, in a manner that suggests he wants Sessions to resign.

We didnt talk in any great detail about this, but obviously its in the news, Cornyn said, reiterating his strong support of Sessions remaining in office.

Cornyn is not alone in rallying to the defense of Sessions, who, despite sometimes having waged lonely battles as one of the chambers most staunch conservatives, still has many friends among Senate Republicans. Most have issued statements of support, and several are making private calls to reassure Sessions that they are behind him.

But the tension over Trumps treatment of Sessions goes beyond the senators defending a friend.

(Taylor Turner/The Washington Post)

Unlike any other controversial move that Trump has pondered in his six months as president, Senate Republicans are sending preemptive signals that firing the attorney general or pressuring him to resign would be a terrible move.

Some have warned high-level White House officials that it would look as though Trump were making the move solely to shut down an investigation of his campaign and the White House, now overseen by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, while also making clear that they agree with Sessionss decision to recuse himself from an investigation of the Trump campaigns connections to Russia.

Replacing Sessions would be difficult, and the idea of Trump making a recess appointment during the planned four-week break in August is foolhardy. Democrats can indefinitely stall a resolution to fully adjourn the Senate, having already forced minute-long periods during even shorter breaks to prevent Trump from having the authority to make temporary appointments while the Senate is away.

Democrats may have vehemently opposed Sessionss nomination, but they have no intention of allowing Trump to fire him and name a new attorney general with a recess appointment, and frankly, Republicans do not seem to want to give Trump that power either.

Trumps hard-line actions have an intellectual godfather: Jeff Sessions

Beyond concerns about the controversy that firing Sessions would bring, Senate Republicans say, Trumps behavior is unseemly toward someone they respect, given that Sessions went out on a limb for the first-time candidate, becoming the first senator to endorse Trumps candidacy.

I think Sessions deserves to be treated much more fairly. I mean, Jeff was there when no other senator was, said Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (Utah), the longest currently serving Republican in the Senate. Hatch spoke to Sessions last Thursday to declare his support, a message he conveyed to White House officials, and Hatch is trying to set up a call to Trump to deliver the same message.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) made clear in a brief interview Wednesday that his backing of Sessions has gone up the chain of command. Asked if he told Trump of his support, McConnell smiled.

Ive conveyed that to the public and to others, he said.

The support for Sessions runs deep across the Republican Party. Former senator Jim DeMint (S.C.), a conservative renegade who often clashed with McConnell, praised the attorney general Wednesday during a visit to the Capitol.

One of the best guys I ever worked with, he said. I hope he and the president can work it out.

The question, however, is how Senate Republicans will respond if Trump does force their friend out of the Justice Department a move that might be followed by firing Mueller, setting off another crisis at least as big as the ouster of James B. Comey as FBI director in May.

Would there be any ramification beyond just expressing dismay?

That remains to be seen, but some are warning that the fallout would be devastating to the rest of Trumps agenda.

I think Jeff Sessions is doing a good job, and I think it would be incredibly disruptive and make it more difficult for the president to accomplish his agenda, Cornyn told CNN early Wednesday.

By lunchtime, Cornyn declined to say what the ramifications would be, instead focusing on the attorney generals decision to recuse himself from the Russia investigation. Sessions had served as an adviser to the Trump campaign, a high-profile surrogate who would travel with him and often introduce him at rallies. He also got caught up in a controversy by not fully revealing during his confirmation process all of his contacts with Russian officials.

Jeff Sessions should have been a tough sell in the Senate, but hes too nice

That made it a by-the-book call to recuse, delegating the investigation to Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein, who then appointed Mueller shortly after he was involved in the Comey firing which is now its own piece of the Mueller inquiry.

I cant imagine any future nominee would have decided the recusal issue any differently from Jeff Sessions, Cornyn said.

Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), who was elected along with Sessions in 1996, became visibly angry when discussing Trumps treatment of his former colleague. Its very difficult, its disconcerting, its inexplicable, he said. I dont know why you have to tweet with regards to your feelings about people in your own Cabinet.

One fallout from Trumps treatment of Sessions could be to guarantee that no Senate Republican will again be willing to give up a seat to accept a job with Trump.

There are some well-qualified individuals, who otherwise would be inclined to serve, who might be discouraged from doing so given the rift that he has had with one of his most loyal supporters, said Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), a moderate who became friends with Sessions as part of the 1996 class.

After Comey was fired, Sessions led the recruiting effort to get Cornyn the nomination to run the FBI. Their wives talked about the idea and Cornyn warmed to it, before other Republicans signaled that he would be too political a choice to run the independent investigative body.

Now, their double dates take on a different tone when they discuss working for Trump.

Hes doing fine, Cornyn said of Sessions. He did the right thing, and I think he has the confidence that he did the right thing.

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Senate Republicans have tolerated Trump's controversies. His treatment of Sessions is different. - Washington Post

Donald Trumps presidency has truly gone through the looking glass.

Were debating how much collusion with Russians to help win the 2016 presidential election is enough to justify prosecution or removal from office not whether the Trump team was interested (we know now that , at the very least, senior Trump campaign advisers attempted to accept help from Russia).In this bizarro world, the president of the United States takes to Twitter to claim his complete power to issue pardons including, he seems to believe, the power to pardon himself (it isfar from clearthat he could legally do this, but the fact that this is on the table is unprecedented and deeply disturbing).

Another possible constitutional crisis is on the horizon as Trumpmay be readying to fire Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating possible crimes committed by Trump or members of his campaign and administration. Trump also is engaged in a bizarre effort to bully Attorney General Jeff Sessions out of his job,potentially as part of a plan to then remove Muellerfrom his position, an end game that would be reminiscent ofPresident Richard NixonsSaturdayNight Massacre.

What does the U.S. political party holding the most power say about this upside-down reality? Many observers wonder what could move Republicans in Congress to act in defense of The Constitution and American democracy. Surely theyll draw the line somewhere, right? The only reason they havent acted yet, we assume, is that in order to advance their legislative agenda on items like health care and tax cuts for the wealthy, Republicans are willing to hold their noses and put up with possible Russian collusion and suspicions that the Trump administration obstructed justice.

That may be too generous a reading. It presumes congressional Republicans understand that Trump threatens our constitutional system and they would, under the right conditions, rein him in (lets say, after key legislation is passed or if Trump fires Mueller).In other words, Republicans are willing to put up with a president they see as dangerous if it helps them achieve policy goals, but their support for Trump personally is grudging, at best.

There could be one other possibility: Trumps anti-democratic approach fits perfectly with a Republican party that often benefits from anti-democratic strategies.Consider:

1. Voter suppression: A central part of Republican electoral strategy is aimed at suppressing the voteof segments of the U.S. population likely to vote Democratic. This approach has been successful , involving tactics including targeting voter ID laws, reductions in early voting hours, disenfranchisement of more than six million adultswith felony convictions, androlling back the Voting Rights Act. The Brennan Center notes that so far in 2017 at least 99 bills aimed at making it harder to register to vote and/or to vote have beenintroduced in 31 states.Trumpscontroversial voting commissionis designed to support these efforts at the national level.

2. Gerrymandering: Republicans havedrawn congressional district linesto the extent that they can win an easy majority in the House of Representatives without actually winning a majority of the popular votes cast. In 2016, Republicans won 49.9% of the votes cast for House members nationwide while Democrats won 47.3%, but gerrymandering gave Republicans control of55.2% of House seats while Democrats ended up with just 44.8%. With district lines drawn as they are, it is quite possible that Democrats could win a majority of House votes cast nationwidewithout winning a majority of seats.

There may be good reasons to stop majorities from deciding every matter.For instance, in a constitutional democracy, a simple majority cannot take away the minoritys constitutional rights. But voter suppression and gerrymandering are not about protecting minority rights in any legitimate sense of the term: theyre about preventing people from fully participating in the democratic process.Republicans understand this, and have used these tools to their advantage.

How could this help us understand why Republicans may not be moved to take evidence of connections between the Trump team and Russia more seriously?Russian interference in the 2016 election was aimed at helping Trump win, which of course is a benefit to the Republican party in general.That certainly doesnt mean that congressional Republicans were involved in any possible collusion, but it does suggest that they would see no political reason to worry about Russian help.Indeed, when the Obama administration told some congressional leaders last year that intelligence showed Russia was interfering in the election to help Trump,Republicans refused to participate in an effort to warn the American public.

Whats worse is that Republicans clearly know Russia is no friend to the United States: witness thenearly unanimous votes in Congress making it harder for Trump to undo Russia sanctions. This is telling: Republicans understand that unless he is stopped, Trump is likely to give Putin what he wants. Yet so far they are taking no meaningful action to unravel the long thread of ties between the Trump team and Russia during the campaign.

None of this is to suggest that Democrats wouldnt gerrymander districts; given the opportunity, they do. If a hostile foreign country interfered in some future election to help the Democratic party, we dont know how Democrats would respond.

Thats not what were confronted with now.The Republican Party has benefited intentionally or not from Russian interference in an election. We have a Republican president who praises Vladimir Putin at every turn and has takenactions to advance Russias preferred policy agendawithout getting anything for the United States in return.

So if youre wondering why, when congressional Republicans see this but do not act, there may be a simple explanation.

ChrisEdelsonis an assistant professor of government in American Universitys School of Public Affairs. His latest book, Power Without Constraint: The Post 9/11 Presidency and National Security , was published in May 2016 by the University of Wisconsin Press.

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Opinion: Trump's anti-democratic presidency helps Republicans stay in power - MarketWatch

Senate Republicans on July 25 voted to start debate on a health-care bill as Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) urged senators from both parties to work together. (Bastien Inzaurralde/The Washington Post)

As Republicans struggle to figure out which spectacularly unpopular, viciously cruel and perfunctorily considered version of their health-care bill they want to become law, one former member of the House leadership has come out with an extraordinary admission about what a scam the whole project is. Inan interview with Elaina Plott of Washingtonian magazine, former House majority leader Eric Cantor, who was defeated in a primary in 2014 by a tea party extremist, explains that Republicans knew they were lying to their base about their ability to repeal the Affordable Care Act, but they just couldnt help themselves:

To give the impression that if Republicans were in control of the House and Senate, that we could do that when Obama was still in office . . . . His voice trails off and he shakes his head. I never believed it.

He says he wasnt the only one aware of the charade: We sort of all got what was going on, that there was this disconnect in terms of communication, because no one wanted to take the time out in the general public to even think about Wait a minutethat cant happen. But, he adds, if youve got that anger working for you, youre gonna let it be.

Its a stunning admission from a former member of the party leadershipthat the linchpin of GOP electoral strategy for the better part of a decade was a fantasy, a flame continually fanned solely because, when it came to midterm elections, it worked. (Barring, of course, his own.)

Whats truly remarkable isnt that a bunch of cynical politicians thought they could ride their base voters anger into control of Congress by lying to them about what they could actually accomplish; its that their voters actually believed it. And then those voters got even angrier when it turned out that the president had the ability to veto bills passed by a Congress controlled by the other party. Who knew! So instead of looking for a presidential candidate who would treat them like adults, they elected Donald Trump, a man who would pander to their gullibility even more.

Which brings us to where we are today. Republicans couldnt be bothered for seven years to actually think about what repealing and replacing the ACA might involve, or whether there would be trade-offs and choices to make, or whether setting up a system that accorded with their conservative philosophy might not actually solve the problems of the health-care system. They thought it would be enough to tell their votersto get mad, and worry later about what it would take to keep the promises they made.

So now they find themselves with a bill that nearly everyone hates. If it passes (in whatever form), it will be a disaster for the health-care system and will be a political disaster for them as well. But theyve convinced themselves that the only thing worse politically would be to not pass anything, because that would incur the wrath of those same base voters. In other words, their current position is, We know how catastrophic this bill would be. But we got here by lying to these knuckle-dragging mouth-breathers for years, and if we dont follow through, theyll punish us. They believe that their voters will say, Okay, so I lost my health coverage because of you, but youll get my vote again because you kept your promise.

Trump supporters at a speech in Youngstown, Ohio, on July 25, rallied behind the idea of repealing Obamacare, but remained divided on how Congress should replace it. (Reuters)

Thats not to say that there isnt plenty of outright malice in what Republicans are doing, because there is. Their contempt for people who struggle economically is boundless. Theyve wanted to destroy Medicaid for decades, and they just might be able to do it. But their strongest motivation right now is fear, fear of the voters they regard as too dim-witted to be able to make a rational judgment about the most consequential policy question one can imagine.

Am I being unkind? Consider what the president is up to at the moment. This morning he announced that hell be banning transgender people from serving in the military, serving up a bogus rationale about how they cost too much money. A White House official toldAxios that this is a political masterstroke:

This forces Democrats in Rust Belt states like Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin, to take complete ownership of this issue.

Yes, the 2018 elections will hinge on transgender people serving in the military. Thats mind-numbingly stupid, but to believe it youd have to think that voters are complete idiots. And as The Post reports, Trump addressed a big crowd of his voters yesterday in Youngstown, Ohio:

Here in the heart of the industrial Midwest, Trump promised to refill lost manufacturing jobs in factories or to rip em down and build brand-new ones.

Thats whats going to happen, Trump said at a campaign rally in a packed hockey arena that holds 7,000 people Trump said: Theyre all coming back. Theyre all coming back. Theyre coming back. Dont move. Dont sell your house.

In fairness, many people in the area, even Republicans, understand thats a complete crock. Those jobs arent coming back, and the regions future wont be built on factories that employ huge numbers of people who can move into high-wage, high-benefit jobs with little preparation. Yet they still show up at his rallies and cheer while he lies right in their faces.

If theres a note of hope to be found in all this, its that this health-care effort has been such a farce in large part because the public has finally begun to clue in to what the Republican proposals might actually mean. That idea terrifies Republicans in Congress, which is why they are pushing through one of the most sweeping and consequential pieces of legislation in American history without a single hearing and with only a few hours of floor debate. Since one version of the bill was voted down yesterday, the current strategy seems to be to pass skinny repeal, which would do nothing except eliminate the individual and employer mandates and a tax on medical devices.

If that were to become law, it would immediately destroy the individual insurance market, since youd be able to wait until you got sick before buying insurance and insurers would still have to cover you. Republicans in Congress dont know a lot about health-care policy, but they know enough to understand that. Theyre hoping, however, that the public is too dumb to realize just how destructive the idea would be.

Theres one other path open to them, which is to pass skinny repeal, then go to a conference committee with the House, in which an entirely new bill would be written incorporating the other things Republicans want to do. That bill could then be presented to both houses as a last chance to repeal the hated Obamacare, in the hopes that members would vote for it despite its inevitable unpopularity and cataclysmic consequences for Americans health care.

If and when that happens, Republicans will make that same calculation again: This thing is terrible and most everyone hates it, but we have to pass something because we fooled members of our base into thinking this would all be simple and we could give them everything they want. Or as Trump said during the campaign, Youre going to have such great health care at a tiny fraction of the cost, and it is going to be so easy.

That was just one of the many lies they were told, and they ate it up. Now well all have to pay the price.

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Trump and Republicans treat their voters like morons - Washington Post