DownWithTyranny!: Are all right-wingers psycho scumbags? Let's visit with Rand Paul and "Cuckoo Ken" Cuccinelli

It's good to know that, despite losing the Virginia governorship, former AG "Cuckoo Ken" Cuccinelli hasn't forsworn the public arena.

by Ken

Every time you think you've heard it all . . . .

I don't know how many readers remember Bruce Fein as a pipsqueak who styled himself a "constitutional lawyer" and squeaked at the time what seemed the nuttiest right-wing nutjob you could have outside the walls of a mental institution. Well, surprise! In this morality play he has evolved into the Voice of Reason, or perhaps more likely the world has devolved into the House of Crazy.

One obvious difference is that Fein in his constitutional labors was at least familiar with the document. Today's right-wing constitutional "experts" are people who have heard some wacko talking point from either some hoodlum holed up in a no-think tank or some hate-talk radio drone. More generally, the far-right-wingers of Fein's generation had to have actually spent time in the real world and to be able to at least account for basic signposts of reality.

One wonderful feature of this story is that it unites two basic strands of far-right nutjobbery -- Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul representing the illibertarian wing, and former Virginia AG "Cuckoo Ken" Cuccinelli representing the garden-variety-nutjob wing. Another nice touch is that the apparent legal goon of the case is indeed the former attorney general of an actual U.S. state.

But the most wondrous feature is the basic plot: a band of right-wing goons stealing somebody else's lawsuit. I don't recall ever hearing of such a thing. Note that this is another of those stories where you don't know whether to laugh or cry.

Of late Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank seems to have made the creepy fauna of the Far Right his personal turf. Here's his account of this startling development:

Rand Paul and Ken Cuccinelli accused of stealing NSA lawsuit

By Dana Milbank, Published: February 12

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has been caught using purloined passages in several of his speeches. Now the aspiring presidential candidate stands accused of filing a lawsuit stolen from its author.

Since December, the libertarian lawmaker, a tea party favorite, had been working with former Reagan administration lawyer Bruce Fein to draft a class-action suit seeking to have the National Security Agency's surveillance of telephone data declared unconstitutional; the two men appeared together as early as last June to denounce the NSA's activities.

But when Paul filed his suit at the U.S. District Court in Washington on Wednesday morning, Fein's name had been replaced with that of Ken Cuccinelli, the failed Republican gubernatorial candidate in Virginia who until last month had been the state's attorney general. Cuccinelli has never argued a case in that courthouse, and he isn't even a member of the D.C. bar (he also filed a motion Wednesday seeking an exception to allow him to argue this case in D.C.). But he is, like Paul, a tea party darling.

Fein, who has not been paid in full for his legal work by Paul's political action committee, was furious that he had been omitted from the filing he wrote. "I am aghast and shocked by Ken Cuccinelli's behavior and his absolute knowledge that this entire complaint was the work product, intellectual property and legal genius of Bruce Fein," Mattie Fein, his ex-wife and spokeswoman, told me Wednesday. "Ken Cuccinelli stole the suit," she said, adding that Paul, who "already has one plagiarism issue, now has a lawyer who just takes another lawyer's work product."

After the morning news conference announcing the suit, Cuccinelli told me that "Bruce Fein will be brought in later."

But a Jan. 15 draft of the complaint written by Fein has long passages that are nearly identical to those in the complaint Cuccinelli filed Wednesday. Except for some cuts and minor wording changes, they are clearly the same documents.

For example, Fein's version said, "When the MATP was disclosed by Edward Snowden, public opinion polls showed widespread opposition to the dragnet collection, storage, retention, and search of telephony metadata collected on every domestic or international phone call made or received by citizens or permanent resident aliens in the United States."

Cuccinelli's version said, "Since the MATP was publicly disclosed, public opinion polls showed widespread opposition to the dragnet collection, storage, retention, and search of telephone metadata collected on every domestic or international phone call made or received by citizens or permanent resident aliens in the United States."

Fein wrote: "On information and belief, Defendants' Mass Associational Tracking Program since its commencement in May 2006 has not stopped or been instrumental in stopping even one imminent international terrorist attack or has otherwise assisted Defendants in achieving any time-sensitive objective."

Cuccinelli's version: "Upon information and belief, since its commencement in May 2006, Defendants' Mass Associational Tracking Program has not stopped or been instrumental in stopping even one imminent international terrorist attack or otherwise assisted Defendants in achieving any time-sensitive objective."

The unceremonious jettisoning of a constitutional lawyer in favor of the man best known for his unsuccessful suit to have Obamacare declared unconstitutional suggests that Paul's legal action has more to do with politics than the law. And there are other clues. In Fein's version, Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.) was listed as a plaintiff along with Paul, but in the final complaint the Democrat was gone and the tea party group FreedomWorks was added in his place. Both suits list as defendants the director of national intelligence, the FBI director and the director of the NSA, but Fein's version had named the defense secretary and the attorney general. Cuccinelli's version dropped those two — but added President Obama as a defendant, an incendiary change.

When a reporter at the courthouse news conference Wednesday mentioned Paul's presidential aspirations, the senator shut him down. "We're just going to stick with the court case and not politics today," he said.

A Paul advisor said Fein was paid $15,000 and that "multiple attorneys" were involved in the complaint. Behind the scenes, Paul's team reacted angrily to Fein's accusations.

Doug Stafford, Paul's top political operative, sent Fein an e-mail Wednesday afternoon saying he expected Fein would be involved in the future, but he criticized Fein for complaining publicly. "That is crazy and makes no sense if your interest is to work as part of the team. None," he wrote.

Cuccinelli, meanwhile, complained in a separate e-mail to Fein that "our clients don't want the lawyers to become the story."