Talking Points Memo tipped me off to this nice, long profile of Republican Senate candidate Rand Paul in Details.

Paul is Kentucky's senator, not ours. Still, environmentalists (and anyone who, like me, comes from the Southern Appalachians) should pay close attention to this guy.

Here, for instance, is Paul's take on the scarring of one of the most beautiful regions on earth, the mountains of Harlan County, Kentucky.

For decades, strip mining to get at the coal inside the Kentucky mountains has been leveling and denuding craggy, wooded peaks and fouling little streams.

Shortly before she moved out of the region, I visited a beloved aunt in Harlan, at the edge of that little southeastern Kentucky town. Years before, she and my uncle had started their marriage living in a coal camp named Mary Helen, about 6 miles farther into the folds of the Appalachians. Mountains rose on either side; a pristine little stream meandered at the edge of my aunt and uncle's backyard. I spent summer afternoons and evenings there, wandering the hills and going on picnics at a waterfall, up a rocky, rhododendron-lined brook.

When I went back for my last visit, my aunt warned me not to drive back to Mary Helen. "Don't go," she said. "It's too painful to see."

And indeed it was.

Rand Paul, in the Details profile, sees something different. "The top ends up flatter," he said of the mining's effect on the mountains, "but we're not talking about Mount Everest. We're talking about these little knobby hills that are everywhere out here. And I've seen the reclaimed lands. One of them is 800 acres, with a sports complex on it, elk roaming, covered in grass."

Most people, he said, "would say the land is of enhanced value, because now you can build on it."

It's tempting to dismiss comments like these - and to dismiss Rand Paul. Even to some Republican leaders, he's an embarrassment. But his dismantle-government thrust will find a lot of support from the public, and a lot of friends in Congress. So will his business-first, property-rights-first, development-at-all-costs philosophy.

Many of the mountains in the Southern Appalachians have already been robbed of their beauty. But this isn't a regional issue. And Rand Paul isn't a threat to the interests of Kentucky alone.