"I think we have bigger problems in our country than sending armed FDA agents into peaceful farmers' land and telling them they can't sell milk directly from the cow," Rand Paul said yesterday in a rousing speech calling for an end to the Food and Drug Administration's police powers. More from the transcript, provided by Paul's office:

Some of you might be surprised the FDA is armed. Well, you shouldn't be.

We have nearly 40 federal agencies that are armed. I'm not against having police, I'm not against the army, the military, the FBI, but I think bureaucrats don't need to be carrying weapons and I think what we ought to do, is if there is a need for an armed policeman to be there, the FBI who are trained to do this should do it. But I don't think it's a good idea to be arming bureaucrats to go on the farm to, with arms, to stop people from selling milk from a cow.

I think we have too many armed federal agencies, and that we need to put an end to this. Criminal law seems to be increasing, increasingly is using a tool of our government bureaucracy to punish and control honest businessmen for simply attempting to make a living.

Historically the criminal law was intended to punish only the most horrible offenses that everyone agreed were inherently wrong or evil, offenses like rape, murder, theft, arson – but now we've basically federalized thousands of activities and called them crimes.

If bureaucrats need to involve the police, let's have them use the FBI, but I see no reason to have the FDA carrying weapons.