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ROUGH TRANSCRIPT:

HARTMANN: Rand Paul is filibustering the President’s nomination of Mr. Brennan to head the CIA. Now, this is really important and it’s important for a reason that probably you have not thought of. I think a lot of people haven’t considered this in the context of its impact on what I’m going to talk about here.

Back in July of 2009, this is four years ago, six months into the first term of Obama’s Presidency, Louise and I were back in Michigan for our family reunion picnic and one of my brothers is a sport and target shooter and we wanted to do some target shooting. So we went to one of Central Michigan’s biggest gun stores to buy some ammunition. This was a giant gun store. It was the size of a mini Walmart. It was huge. They had hundreds, thousands of guns and a wall full of ammunition. Or, rather, a wall full of half empty shells that usually were over filling with ammunition. But when we got to that store the owner said he couldn’t sell me more than 50 rounds of ammunition, which is basically a box or two, because the store was running low on ammo. So I asked why the store was running low on ammo and his response was along the lines of, and I don’t know how to say this but this is a pretty verbatim recollection, he said, “Because that n word in the White House is taking all our guns away and people are stocking up”. Now this was four years ago. I was astounded. And, I said, “How do you know that he wants to take all your guns away?” (I didn’t even deal with the obscenity). He said, “I’ve got the emails to prove it. The Federal Government is not only planning to take away everyone’s guns but that Obama is even planning on taking out people he doesn’t like”.

This all took place four years ago. At that time the government hating gun store owner represented a fringe group in America, and at that time information about how the government was running out of control way beyond the constraints the founders put in the constitution that was pretty much the kind of talk you heard on far right extremist short wave radio emails and websites. That was pretty much it.

Well, times have changed. Now the gun nuts that are stocking up on ammo and forming right wing extremist hate groups have the Attorney General of the United States telling them that he and the President reserve the right to kill them if he thinks they’re a threat. Yes. You heard that right. Attorney General Eric Holder is not ruling out a scenario in which the President could order a drone strike against American citizens on US soil.

Listen to the rest of what Thom Hartmann has to say President Obama’s drone policy.

Visit Thom Hartmann’s website.

SONALI KOLHATKAR IS ON MATERNITY LEAVE.