A photo of a few of the NoZe Brothers published in a 1983 issue of The Rope. Rand Paul is dressed in a black robe and straw hat.

You wouldn’t have to blindfold me;

The strangest episode of Paul’s time at Baylor occurred one afternoon in 1983 (although memories about all of these events are understandably a bit hazy, so the date might be slightly off), when he and a NoZe brother paid a visit to a female student who was one of Paul’s teammates on the Baylor swim team. According to this woman, who requested anonymity because of her current job as a clinical psychologist, “He and Randy came to my house, they knocked on my door, and then they blindfolded me, tied me up, and put me in their car. They took me to their apartment and tried to force me to take bong hits. They’d been smoking pot.” After the woman refused to smoke with them, Paul and his friend put her back in their car and drove to the countryside outside of Waco, where they stopped near a creek. “They told me their god was ‘Aqua Buddha’ and that I needed to bow down and worship him,” the woman recalls. “They blindfolded me and made me bow down to ‘Aqua Buddha’ in the creek. I had to say, ‘I worship you Aqua Buddha, I worship you.’ At Baylor, there were people actively going around trying to save you and we had to go to chapel, so worshiping idols was a big no-no.”

Nearly 30 years later, the woman is still trying to make sense of that afternoon. “They never hurt me, they never did anything wrong, but the whole thing was kind of sadistic. They were messing with my mind. It was some kind of joke.” She hadn’t actually realized that Paul wound up leaving Baylor early. “I just know I never saw Randy after that—for understandable reasons, I think.”

Hey, not to bag on anyone for smoking pot in college, but kidnapping someone and forcing them to smoke weed? Uncool.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOZtk5P7RCU&feature=related[/youtube]

While I think it can be very difficult as a social liberal to defend some of Rand’s comments, I do defend some of the things he says;

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3O2rBz9gwo[/youtube]

I unequivically disagree with Rand and his stance on the Civil Rights Act. Discrimination needed to be reigned in, publicly and privately. One of the reasons why I support gay marriage and equality rights for gays is because equal rights should be afforded to everyone in this country, but as Rand Paul points out in the NPR interview, we must take common sense steps while achieving equality. He brings up the ADA. I agree with him, why not let local businesses and communities solve these issues, why let the Feds mandate these programs? Can’t we use common sense to solve problems instead of an across the board approach? I think that is really what Rand is talking about.

As for his rants about the liberal media (who is owned by rich, well-connected Republicans) and his affiliation with the tea-party movement (who is funded by rich, well-connected Republicans, the Koch Brothers in particular) Puhleeeeese! You are not fooling anyone.

This will have ramifications. As I told someone tonight, “Will he follow thru on his teabagger promises?” Remember, Obama used the fringe left to get himself elected then forgot about them after he took office (That’s okay, Steve got a job suckering the ‘Good People’ of Sioux Falls into voting for Huether (you know, the guy with the gay agenda – Mike, not Steve). Will Rand remember the teabaggers?

In the first race called Tuesday night, conservative insurgent Rand Paul — son of former GOP presidential candidate and Texas Rep. Ron Paul — defeated Secretary of State Trey Grayson in a Republican primary fight for the seat held by retiring GOP Sen. Jim Bunning.