If you're interested in knowing which scepters of power the Warfare State is most unwilling to relinquish, try wrenching a few from its grasp. The volume of the cacophony will let you know just how grievously the beast in DC has been wounded. And it's never roared as loudly as it did at midnight on Sunday, when Rand Paul forced the expiration of the NSA's domestic surveillance program. ABC News reports:

Three key provisions of the Patriot Act expired at midnight – Section 215, which authorizes the NSA's bulk collection of Americans' phone records; a roving wiretap provision that allows law enforcement officials to monitor terror suspects that use multiple phones; and a program that officials can use to monitor "lone wolf" terror suspects, not connected to any known terrorist organizations.

Virtually the entire Washington DC Establishment dogpiled Rand for his stand, outraged that anyone should shield American citizens from a Leviathan State that is accustomed to getting what it wants from its senators. To have its sustenance denied sends it into a rage. Sustenance, that is, in the form of slaughtered liberty. And Rand Paul's peers in Congress are behaving predictably like the spoiled toddlers they are when their toys are taken away.