Senate confirms John Brennan as CIA head The Senate confirmed John Brennan as the new head of the Central Intelligence Agency in the wake of a public split among Republicans about the limits of executive power and US policy on drones. Lindsey Graham and John McCain, two defence hawks, defended Barack Obama and rebuked Rand Paul, the conservative senator from Kentucky, for raising questions in his nearly 13-hour filibuster that temporarily blocked a vote on Mr Brennan's nomination about whether the White House could legally kill Americans at home with drone strikes. The two lawmakers called the suggestion that any president could target Americans who were not an imminent threat "ridiculous" and "offensive," even as many conservatives and some liberals praised Mr Paul's decision to deploy the legislative manoeuvre to highlight an important foreign policy issue. "I think what he has done is very very important," Pat Toomey, a Republican from Pennsylvania, said Thursday. Given that they [the Obama administration] are deploying a very active programme of killing people overseas, do they or do they not believe they have the authority to use drones to kill American citizens on American soil who are non-combatants and are not an imminent threat? Mr Paul dropped his objection to Mr Brennan on Thursday afternoon after he received a letter from Attorney-General Eric Holder that said the president did not have authority to use a weaponised drone to kill an American that was "not engaged in combat on American soil." With that, Mr Brennan easily won confirmation in the upper chamber. Mr Paul's prolonged speech took cable television and Twitter by storm, inspiring the hashtag #standwithrand. Mr McCain and Mr Graham on Thursday took to the Senate floor themselves to attack what they said was an absurd and naive view about drones possibly threatening American liberty. Mr McCain rejected Mr Paul's claim that the US government could have dropped a Hellfire missile on Jane Fonda, the former anti-war activist and actor who toured Hanoi in 1972, and other political protesters, under its current drone policy. To somehow say that someone who disagrees with American policy and even may demonstrate against it is somehow a member of an organisation which makes that individual an enemy combatant is simply false. Republican Senator John McCain Mr McCain, the former Republican nominee for president and a previous prisoner of war who was tortured during the Vietnam conflict, said that while Ms Fonda was "not his favourite American," any claim that the government would have had her killed was "totally unfounded." "To somehow say that someone who disagrees with American policy and even may demonstrate against it is somehow a member of an organisation which makes that individual an enemy combatant is simply false," Mr McCain said. He added that there were realistic scenarios in which a president might have to order a drone strike against an American if there was an imminent threat - like a bomb-laden truck driving towards a nuclear plant. Mr Graham said he disagreed with many aspects of Mr Obama's presidency but that the White House had used its ability to attack using drones "responsibly." He pointed an accusatory finger at other Republicans who had joined Mr Paul's quest by helping him during the filibuster by asking questions and reading texts to help fill the hours and give Mr Paul a break. Senator Marco Rubio even quoted Jay-Z, a hip-hop star, on the floor of the Senate to kill time while Ted Cruz, a Tea Party favourite, encouraged Mr Paul by reading out supportive tweets. To my Republican colleagues, I don't remember any of you coming down here suggesting that President Bush was going to kill anybody with a drone, do you? Mr Graham said. This drone programme has gotten every Republican so spun up. What are we up to here? The two lawmakers were backed by Thursday's Wall Street Journal, which mocked Mr Paul for a "political stunt" that did little but "fire up impressionable libertarian kids."