RICH LOWRY: The Rand Paul Moment.

You won’t find him on any Federal Election Commission disclosure forms, but Director of National Intelligence James Clapper is the biggest in-kind donor to the incipient Rand Paul for president campaign.

Whatever its merits, the National Security Agency meta-data program couldn’t be better fashioned to play into fears of the government. Is it vast? Yes. Was it secret? Check. Does it arguably run outside the normal checks and balances of government? Uh-huh. Does it raise profound questions about privacy? Roger.

This is the kind of issue Rand Paul was born and (literally) raised to raise holy hell over. And it isn’t just the NSA program lately. The leak about the program came on the heels of revelations that the IRS was singling out tea party groups for extra scrutiny and invasive questions, and on the heels of the AP and James Rosen investigations.

Add in the gun control fight from earlier this year and Paul is nearly 4-for-4 in fights sticking up, in his view, for the first four amendments of the Bill of Rights. The only thing that is missing is the third, because no has proposed the quartering of troops in our homes — yet.

Yet, indeed. Plus: “Paul has that quality that can’t be learned or bought: He’s interesting.”