[ applause ] sorry to -- sorry to cut mr. clegg short, but we do have to stop because we have exactly 90 minutes for this program. that ends, incidentally of course as you would guess, this edition of question time. we're going to be back not next thursday when we have the election results but on friday evening at 9:00 when we'll be looking back at the election and seeing what's happened. the first chance to talk about it. so from here my thanks of course to our party leaders and particularly to all of you who came to take part in this in leeds. good night. [ applause ] >> a look at the state of the u.s. economy with cnbc reporter. kim mac of the daily beast -- tim mack of the daily beast talks about the patriot act. and reconstruction efforts in afghanistan. we take your calls him a clear comments on facebook and twitter. -- m look for your comments on facebook and twitter. the european trade commissioner will be in washington, d.c., on monday. she will speak at the center for strategic and international studies. that is live at 9:00 eastern. later in the day, it we take you to the cato institute for a discussion on the future of south africa. speakers will look at the political and economic development in that country since apartheid was demolished. that begins at noon eastern on c-span 2. click here are a few of the book festivals we will be covering the spring. we will visit maryland for live coverage of the gaithersburg book festival. we will close out may at book expo america in new york city. on the first week in june, we are live for the chicago tribune including our three-hour live in-depth program. that is the spring on book tv. >> new hampshire tv station wmur conducted interviews with several presidential hopefuls. rand paul was featured in the series. his interview happened about three weeks before he declared his candidacy in april. this is 25 minutes. >> i will be asking the candidates questions. we will have our studio audience coming to ask questions of their own. let's get a quick look at the candidates biography. rand paul was born in pittsburgh in 1963. he is the son of former president candidate ron paul. like his father, he is a doctor. he was a practicing ophthalmologist for 17 years and founded an organization that provides eye exams to the needy. he is a vocal advocate for term limits, a balanced budget amendment and believes the country's debt is a major threat. he has been married for 24 years and has three sons. >> let's talk about 2016. it seems like the decision is all made up. how close are you? senator paul: i have been traveling the country to spread a message. trying to gauge whether or not the message has residents and whether or not the message has enough of a constituency to have a chance. >> you do have quite a bit of support in new hampshire, as did your dad. do you think there is a ceiling. it seems to reach a certain point. senator paul i think the message has a constituency in the republican party and has a constituency among independents and some democrats. i am not only fiscally conservative, but also i have reached out and worked with cory booker on criminal justice. i think it is a mixture of issues that actually is kind of where people are. some people say a plurality of people are neither. >> a lot of people attached to the word libertarian when they talk about you. the definition varies a little bit. what is a libertarian? senator paul: i like to use the word libertarianish. i believe in the right to privacy. i think the government has no right to be looking at your records unless they have a court order with your name on it. i have had a great deal of objection to this bulk collection of your phone calls. the warrant that was revealed by snowden said verizon on it. i do not know mr. verizon. if you want my phone records but the individual's name on it and you should have probable cause. a great deal of objection on privacy issues. also on criminal justice issues. i think i can attract people beyond the republican party, but not offend people in the republican party. i think a kid who makes mistakes with marijuana should -- should not go to jail. they did an article not too long ago, a kid named timothy tyler was caught with lsd when he was 23. 23 years ago. he is 46 years now, but he will spend the rest of his life in prison for lsd. i do not approve of that. i do not want to put you in jail. if you look at the statistics of who is going to jail, disproportionately black hispanic poor. is there racism involved? there is an inadvertent racial outcome coming from this, but it is real. if you look at surveys of whites and blacks and drug use, whites are using drugs just as much as blacks. the people in prison are black because of the way we do our policing. it adds up over time. we have a real problem with criminal justice. issues like this reach beyond the traditional republican ceiling. >> i would like to ask you about the controversies around your letters. this is a letter you put your name on. you later explained you did this to help president obama. it probably raised a lot of eyebrows. senator paul: i'm a stickler for the constitution. the president is not allowed to write laws. i have voted for sanctions against iran with the hope we would negotiate. i do not want more false -- i do not want war. i do not want and iran that is nuclear and will threaten its neighbors and our allies. i voted for sanctions. the sanctions have been passed by congress. the president cannot sign a separate agreement with iran. the reason we separated the branches was because there would be checks and balances. we've had these debates with the president on whether or not he can amend health care law whether he can amend immigration law, and whether he can undo sanctions without our approval. we have had this debate over war. war is the most important vote any legislator ever makes. war is to be initiated or declared by congress, not by the president. the president agreed with me when he was a candidate. no president should unilaterally go to war without the approval of congress. the letter simply furthers what i believe. to undo sanctions, it will have to come back to congress. >> i want to get you one record on this. not wanting something and preventing something are two different things when it comes to a nuclear iran. how far should this country go to keep that from happening at go senator paul: there has to be the ultimate -- ultimate threat of using force. the iranians need to know we are serious with this. the sanctions have worked and i have seen the sanctions as a way to not have war. i do honestly want there to be an agreement. when i said i wanted to strengthen the hand, i am sincere and not. i do not want a war with iran. i do not want to see a nuclear iran that becomes a menace to the world. >> we will bring our studio audience into this conversation. stay with us, we will be right back. >> conversation with the candidate continues. >> welcome back. tonight's guest is rand paul. it is time to bring in questions from the audience. i will jump in and follow up as needed. our first question is coming from lauren. lauren: what would you do differently from this current administration in dealing with isis? how do you stop a terrorist group whose main goal is to destroy as much as possible? senator paul: when we go to war we have to go to war in an orderly fashion. the way the constitution intended was that the legislature would initiate war declare war. you have to decide whose prerogative it is. we have been at war for eight months and the president is doing this on his own. even though when he ran for office, he said no president should unilaterally go to war without congress. had i been president in august of last year, i would have come before a joint session of congress and laid out the reasons why isis is a military threat and what we need to do. we have to respond militarily. when you debate over when america needs to be involved and where america needs to be involved, you have to debate -- it becomes a very personal debate. i have three teenaged boys. i debate as if i would be sending one of them to war. with regard to isis, what persuades me we should do something is they very quickly took a city of about 1.5 million people and they were within a day's march of where we have a consulate. i have been very critical of hillary clinton of not protecting the consulate in benghazi. we should defend our consulate. we should defend the embassy in baghdad. it is time to do something. i do tell people, though that i am disappointed that we are fighting against our own weapons . many of the weapons were sent into the syrian civil war simply went to isis, almost without any hesitation. i warned against it and warned against sending those weapons into the syrian civil war. a year after i voted against giving those weapons to the syrian rebels, sure enough, now we are forced to go back over there and fight against our own weapons. there are times when intervention makes things worse. our intervention in the syrian civil war made things worse. i think hillary's war in libya made things worse. if there is one thing that is true in the middle east, when we have toppled the secular dictator, we have gotten chaos and we have gotten the rise of radical islam. living -- libya is an utter disaster. qaddafi was a secular dictator. he suppressed radical islam. he was no great jeffersonian diplomat, but he kept peace and order. when he was toppled, it is worse for us now. same thing in syria. aside is a horrible dictator -- asaad is a horrible dictator. if we would have dislodged him isis would be in damascus. i am somebody who was not eager for intervention. i will intervene when an american interest is at stake. we need to have a strong military to deter that, but we should use it wisely and reluctantly. josh: thank you very much for the question. this one is coming from keenan. keenan: i addressed this a little bit earlier. could you please address your priorities and philosophy when you are confronted with an issue regarding the balance between individual privacy and government provided security, such as law enforcement or national defense? senator paul: benjamin franklin said those who give up their liberty for security will have neither. i believe that. i do not think it is a trade-off. i think we can capture deter and protect our nation from terrorists and use the constitution to do it. the reason i am hesitant to allow blanket surveillance or allow police to go in any house in america to grab people without a warrant, that is what we fought the revolution over. one of the things we objected to the british, the british soldiers were writing their own warrants. under the patriot act, we now allow that in our country. i want to have the separation between the police and the judge . why? people in government are not all perfect angels. i know my perfect fbi -- i know my local fbi agent. the reason i want you to call a judge, there was a time in our history, particularly in the south, where you might affect people who decide they want to go into the house because a black person lives there or age you lives there or -- or a jew lives there or a gay person lives there. there is a check and balance they have to call a judge on the phone. if someone in manchester today is accused of rape and they are behind a door and you did not see them go into their house the police will stand outside the house, called a judge on the phone, and you will get judge's permission to go win. we need that separation of powers. it is why these checks and balances are so important to prevent abuse or bias. josh: another one from the audience comes from barbara. barbara: will you take steps to end the corrupting influence of money in politics? what would those reforms be? senator paul: i think it is a good idea. we have tried to do campaign-finance reform and it has been struck down by the courts. speech -- paid speech is a type of speech. there is a way that is consistent with the constitution that you could limit the effect of special interest. special interest and money has too much influence in washington. one way of trying to fix it, which would pass muster with the supreme court, when we give out contracts -- let's see -- let's say we give you a billion-dollar contract. when you signed that contract, we could put limitations in the contract that says you could agree to limitations to prevent you from lobby the government for more money. if the contractor gets a billion dollars, they take the first million and they hire lobbyists and they ask us for more. we would not preemptively say, you cannot do this. if you get the contract, you cannot do this. there is a precedent for this. active duty military, you are not allowed to run for office in your uniform. if you are a federal employee, you cannot campaign. there are limitations you voluntarily agreed to. the same way -- i think we should do it for contractors. the only way you would ever get it passed, you would have to limit both big business contractors and the unions. if both of them were limited equally and you had preventions built into the contract, so if there is a government union they would have to have the same restrictions a big contractor would have. i am in favor of doing something. josh: thank you, senator. another question from mike. mike: as president, how would your administration address energy economic, and climate security? senator paul: the main thing we need to do is to become energy independent and one of the good things that has come from the technological advances we have now is we are getting to the point where we could export oil. in the 1970's, we passed a law because of opec and the embargo that we would have no export of oil. now we have so much natural gas i think we are the greatest, maybe the largest producer in the world. we have come a long way toward energy independence. you can have both a clean environment and have economic growth, but you have to have a balance of both. the pa -- the epa, the balance has shifted in one direction. we need a clean environment and a robust economy. i will give you an example of how sometimes we have gone too far. the clean water act says you cannot discharge pollutants into a navigable stream. i agree with that. somewhere along the way, over 40 years of rule after will, we have now defined dirt to be a pollutant in my backyard to be in navigable stream. the government is wasting so much time harassing private property owners, they are not doing what they should do. i want them to police the ohio river. do not, to my backyard, and because there are some leaves that have black on the bottom of them, determine my backyard is a wetland. i am not making this up. kim lucas from southern mississippi went to jail and his crime was conspiracy to violate the clean water act and he was putting clean dirt on his own land to raise the elevation. we are doing better as far as energy independence goes. josh: how much of an issue do you think climate change should be in this election? >> there should be a balance, we should not be alarmist about things. it is either or, for the environment or against the environment. maybe we can before the environment and for the economy at the same time. when we look at the environment this is a great question. do you think the environment is cleaner now or cleaner in 1960? fifth grade students, the polar bears are drowning, the statue of liberty is underwater. it has to be a lot worse now. have you ever seen pictures of pittsburgh in 1919? a white shirt would be covered in soot. there have been rules on emissions from smokestacks since the 1930's. everything that comes out of coal fire smokestack has gotten better over the last 40 years. nitrous oxide mercury, they have been trending down. people want to make the rules so low that you have no business. 40% of our electricity comes from coal. i come from a coal producing state so i have a little bit of interest in this. we should not just shut them all down tomorrow. let's have reasonable rules. the only other thing i tell people to try to think about the countries that produce the 10 largest amounts of electricity versus the countries that produce the least amount of electricity, the top 10 live years longer than the bottom 10. why don't we try to balance the environment and civilization? josh: a question from facebook. where do you stand on gun control? senator paul: gun control is a freedom issue. i think we have had some terrible tragedies and some very emotional debate about this. i can understand. if my kids got shot at school, i would be very emotional. the thing is, we do have a problem. through mental illness or spiritual brokenness, young teenage boys have been committing these crimes. the interesting thing you will see about every one of these crimes, not one of them happened at the police station. these kids are crazy, but they do not try to shoot 20 policeman. what we have done in our society, we have put signs in our school, there are no weapons here. it is assigned to a crazy person, come and shoot our kids. we have an armed security guard whether you do or do not. we should send the other message to crazy kids that you do not get a free shooting spree. above and beyond that the second amendment is in our bill of rights. i'm a big believer in the freedom and right to bear arms. josh: time is flying. >> do you think last year's hobby lobby decision was a net win or loss for liberty? senator paul: it was a net win. senatoryou told me to go shorter on my answers. [laughter] religious liberty is important. it is important to me. it was also a bizarre case in that people were trying to insist somehow -- 15 forms of birth control available. a lot of these decisions really should be outside the governmental realm. for all of the craziness in there, no republican who wants to ban birth control. through community health clinics, you can get birth control anywhere in the whole country. if you own hobby lobby and you have a profound religious belief in certain types of birth control, you have a religious objection, that is absolutely you're right. -- that is absolutely right. josh: do you find this topic a distraction? senator paul: i think religious liberty is an important issue. josh: these do have a place because in 2012, folks thought this was -- senator paul: it was a ridiculous issue insinuating that anyone in america wants to ban birth control. it gets dumbed down and people see these ads and they did this in colorado. they tried to go after the candidate out there. finally, people just said, the republican did not want condoms to be sold. it became so ridiculous, they voted the other guy out because his ads were so ridiculous. all issues and politics can go too far. josh: that is all the time we have. we will sign off on television. this is a conversation that will continue online and on our mobile app. 30 more minutes of questions from our studio audience. thank you very much for watching on tv. have a great night. >> are road to the white house coverage continues this week. -- our road to the white house coverage continues this week. live coverage of former arkansas governor mike huckabee as he announces his candidacy for the republican nomination at an event in arkansas. that is live tuesday at 11:00 eastern on c-span. >> the new congressional directory is a handy guide to the 114th congress with color photos of every senator and. district maps, a foldout map of capitol hill, and congressional committees, the presidential cabinet. order your copy today. it is $13.95 plus shipping and handling at c-span.org. >> coming up next, q&a with walter pincus. a special question time from the bbc with british prime minister david cameron and other party leaders. that is followed by some of our road to the white house coverage with jeb bush and chris christie. brian: this week on "q&a," our guest is walter pincus of the "washington post." he writes about national security and defense issues. he talks about his recent articles and events in the news. ben bradley hired me in 1966. i left in 1969, and came back in