This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday, March 7th, 2013.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Kentucky Senator Rand Paul's 13-hour filibuster of the nomination of John Brennan

to head the CIA, was aimed primarily at

getting the White House to answer a fairly simple question.

When can the federal government execute an American citizen without the due process afforded under the Constitution.

As of this recording, Senator Paul is still waiting for his answer.

Julian Sanchez, a research fellow at the Cato Institute, discusses Rand Paul's long night.

Ran Paul's epic 13-hour Mr. Smith goes to Washington,

filibuster of John Brennan's nomination to the post of CIA director wasn't really about John Brennan.

In a sense it wasn't even really about the nominal focus. In principle this was a filibuster about the question of whether the

president has the constitutional authority to do targeted killings like the

drone strikes we've been engaged in overseas against American

citizens on U.S. soil.

And in one sense, that's not something probably that most of us are worried about practically.

We don't think we're on the verge of seeing people getting a hell fire missile dropped on

them during their cafe experience, as Paul put it at one memorable point.

But it is in a way a symbol of the bizarre situation in which we find ourselves post 9-11 that it is so difficult to get an

unambiguous answer to something that seems like it should be such a no-brainer.

That even on this most extreme possible scenario it is difficult to get

an administration to unambiguously declare the constraints on its own powers, declare a

hard limit and say yes there is a line somewhere and that line is here and so in a way we saw over the course of those 13 hours a critique that went

...