I have to say I admire Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., for doing something so many of his colleagues in recent years have failed to do.

Paul stood up and actually filibustered. That is, he spoke on the floor of the U.S. Senate for 13 hours, about this and that in an effort to wheedle a pledge from the Obama administration about the use of unmanned aircraft … drones, if you will.

The object of Paul’s objection was CIA Director John Brennan, who supported President Obama’s use of drone aircraft to strike against terrorists plotting to do harm to the United States. Paul wanted some assurance from Attorney General Eric Holder that the administration wouldn’t deploy the aircraft in U.S. airspace to use against Americans on their home soil. He got such a pledge eventually – and then he called off his filibuster. The full Senate then confirmed Brennan’s nomination and the new spook in chief has taken up his post.

Allow me two points.

First, the use of drones to target Americans abroad who are engaging in acts of war against their country doesn’t give me the least bit of concern. Paul had some concern about that, as did Sen. Ron Wyden, the Oregon Democrat, who joined his Republican colleague in filibustering Brennan’s nomination. A drone did kill a U.S.-born terrorist in Yemen in 2011. I didn’t mourn that American’s death, given that he was a senior al-Qaida operative who allegedly was close to the late Osama bin Laden, who died in May 2011 in a commando attack in Pakistan.

Second, it seems inconceivable to me that any president would dare use a drone aircraft flying in U.S. airspace to attack an American suspected of plotting terrorist activity. That American would have to be caught in the act of committing a heinous act, such as, say, flying a commercial jetliner full of innocent passengers into a skyscraper.

The new CIA boss is on board with the president’s policies regarding the use of drones. They have proven effective in our ongoing anti-terror campaign. President Bush ordered their use during his time in office. Barack Obama merely has extended their deployment well into his own presidency.

And even though it is highly unusual for a senator to filibuster a Cabinet nominee, I have to applaud Paul for actually standing on the Senate floor and blathering on and on, which is what the filibuster by definition allows him to do. Too often in the past so-called “filibusters” have been the result of some senator making a motion to block legislation simply because he or she disagrees with it. But the senator never has been forced to do what Rand Paul did.

At least Paul, the up-and-coming champion of the tea party wing of the GOP, has put himself on the record. Stand tall, Sen. Paul.