Rand Paul says NSA phone records seizure saps Obama's 'moral authority'

Rand Paul says NSA phone records seizure saps Obama's 'moral authority'

Speaking one day before President Barack Obama meets Chinese President Xi Jinping in California, Paul said the NSA program, the controversy around IRS treatment of conservative groups, and other recent government actions sap America's "moral authority" to urge Beijing to embrace democratic reforms and openness.

"I'm appalled," Paul told Yahoo at the start of a wide-ranging exclusive interview in a conference room down the hall from his office.

"I'm not opposed to them going to a judge and getting an order for an individual who you have probable cause to believe that they've been involved with a crime," he said. "It's not that I don't want to go after terrorists or rapists or murderers or any kind of terrible criminal. It's that I want to go after them, not the rest of the law-abiding citizens that are out there."

"It's a great invasion of our privacy," Paul said, calling the NSA activities a violation of the Bill of Rights and insisting that the officials involved need "remedial eduction" in Constitutional protections.