Senator Rand Paul has his faults. Who among us can forget the time he ranted at a representative of the Department of Energy about the inadequacy of his bathroom plumbing? (“You busybodies always want to do something to tell us how we can live our lives better. ... I’ve been waiting for 20 years to talk about how bad these toilets are.”)

But you have to give him credit for effort. On Wednesday, the capital was under a snowstorm warning, and you know how wimpy people in Washington get when there’s even a hint of snow. Everybody wanted to get out and get home. Then Paul brought the Senate to a grinding halt by staging a filibuster against the nomination of John Brennan to be head of the C.I.A.

“I’m here today to speak for as long as I can hold up,” he announced. And off he went.

Paul had no particular problem with the nomination, which he acknowledged was going to pass once he stopped talking. But the debate over Brennan had brought up the question of drone strikes. The junior senator from Kentucky wanted President Obama to promise not to use drones to kill Americans on American soil. “At least we need to know what are the rules,” he said sometime during hour five.

Fair enough. The Obama administration had been unnecessarily dodgy on this point. The very fact that the president was ordering the death of American citizens anywhere without oversight was worrying. Shouldn’t there be a special court to sign off on these things?