Well no, not exactly, but when it comes to his comments about civil rights legislation this is about as close to a defense as Paul is likely to get from the left. Here's Alexander Cockburn:

It's the easiest thing in the world for a grandstanding liberal to push a libertarian into a corner. Then they'll get praise for their unflinching courage, like Morris Dees' South Poverty Law Center putting another "hate group" in the Index and waiting for the contributions to roll in.

Here's Maddow, brandishing the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as though this is the only matter worth considering in the forthcoming race between Rand Paul and the Democrat, an awful neo-liberal prosecutor, Kentucky's current attorney general, Jack "I'm a Tough Son-of-a-Bitch" Conway. Between Conway and Paul, which one in the U.S. Senate would more likely be a wild card – which is the best we can hope for these days – likely to filibuster against a bankers' bailout, against reaffirmation of the Patriot Act, against suppression of the CIA's full torture history? Paul, one would have to bet, and these are the votes that count, where one uncompromising stand by an outsider can make a difference, unlike the gyrations and last-ditch sell-outs of Blowhard Bernie Sanders, no doubt a hero to Maddow and [Amy] Goodman. Liberals love grandstanding about what are, in practice, distractions. You think the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is going to come up for review in the U.S. Senate?

If Rand Paul hadn't been so preoccupied with winding up for what he plainly thought was his knock-out punch, concerning Maddow's posture on the right to bear arms in every restaurant in America from Joe's Diner to Le Cirque, he could have turned the tables easily enough, just by saying that this ritual flourishing of the 1964 Civil Rights Act doesn't have too much to do with what has happened to blacks since that glorious day, from an appalling school system, to blighted housing, constricted employment possibilities, shriveled share of the national income and most recently the great transfer in US history of money and assets from African Americans to rich white people by the mortgage speculators, given free rein by Democrats and Republicans.