In choice of both topic and foil, Rand Paul’s now legendary Senate filibuster was a stroke of political genius. The topic was, ostensibly, very narrow: Does the president have the constitutional authority to put a drone-launched Hellfire missile through your kitchen — you, a good citizen of Topeka to whom POTUS might have taken a dislike — while you’re cooking up a pot roast?

In announcing his wrongheaded proposal to increase the minimum wage to $9 per hour, President Barack Obama spoke in lofty terms: “In the wealthiest nation on earth,” he said in his State of the Union address last month, “no one who works full time should have to live in poverty.”