Category Archives: Ron Paul

UPDATE II: Ron To The Rescue (TSA Animals Animated)

Homeland Security, Individual Rights, Ron Paul, Technology, Terrorism

(Rep.) Ron Paul does the right thing with characteristic brevity. As WND.COM reports, Paul’s H.R. 6416 “is just two sentences long, stating:

No law of the United States shall be construed to confer any immunity for a federal employee or agency or any individual or entity that receives federal funds, who subjects an individual to any physical contact (including contact with any clothing the individual is wearing), X-rays, or millimeter waves, or aids in the creation of or views a representation of any part of a individual’s body covered by clothing as a condition for such individual to be in an airport or to fly in an aircraft. The preceding sentence shall apply even if the individual or the individual’s parent, guardian, or any other individual gives consent.

“‘We have seen the videos of terrified children being grabbed and probed by airport screeners. We have read the stories of Americans being subjected to humiliating body imaging machines and/or forced to have the most intimate parts of their bodies poked and fondled,’ Paul said.”

“‘This TSA version of our rights looks more like the ‘rights’ granted in the old Soviet Constitutions, where freedoms were granted to Soviet citizens – right up to the moment the state decided to remove those freedoms.'”

MORE.

UPDATED I: TSA Animals Animated.

UPDATE II (Nov. 18): I agree with Myron that the Paul bill must provide for probable cause searches, as the Israelis do. More in my WND column, tonight. Does Paul exclude those provisions? I would have preferred a reiteration of the Fourth Amendment.

Debt Commission Dross

Debt, Economy, Military, Politics, Regulation, Ron Paul, Taxation, The State, War, Welfare

As has been said over these pixelated pages, “government commissions are where accountability goes to die.” You get my meaning. For example: Some major cost-cutting measures suggested by Obama’s deficit commission’s preliminary report only kick-in in 2050 and 2075.

Like his father, Rand Paul promises to be a beacon for liberty. Intuitively, Rand cleaves to free-market principles. Here are some salient points Rand has made in response to some silly questions, concerning the deficit commission’s preliminary report, fielded from Face The Nation moderator Bob Schieffer:

“… if you’re serious about the budget, you have to look at the entire budget–military and domestic, if you want to make a dent in the debt.

“…I don’t think I want to raise taxes right now. I think government
is too big and so I think we need to cut spending. The way I see it is, is that you want the private sector to have more money. I want to expand the private sector because we have a– a serious recession so I want to leave more money in the private sector. I want to shrink the ineffective sector of the economy which is the government.”

“… I want to be on the side of reducing spending. So I think really the compromise is where you find the reductions in spending. But I don’t think the compromise is in raising taxes. I mean here, you have to put things in perspective. We now consume at the federal level twenty-five percent of the Gross Domestic Product. [Actually, it is more like 40%, as a lot of spending is off budget] Historically, we were at twenty percent. So we’ve taken five percent away from the private sector. And the private sector is the engine that creates all these jobs. I want to send that five percent back to the private sector.”

“…you should shrink the federal work force and you should make their pay more comparable. Right now the total compensation for government workers versus private workers is almost two to one.”

“…make the tax cuts permanent.”

MORE…

Republicans Already Teed Off With Tea Party

Classical Liberalism, Conservatism, Federal Reserve Bank, Inflation, libertarianism, Political Economy, Republicans, Ron Paul

Well of course the Republicans will back Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas) for the post of GOP conference chair, “the fourth-highest House leadership position,” in the new Congress, over “Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), a ‘Tea Party heroine.'”

If the Daily Beast, run by airhead Tina Brown—“the author of a gossipy, somewhat obese book about the anorexic dolt, Diana Spencer”—and the life-style libertarians at Reason Magazine (which calls the former outfit an “indefatigable friend”), both favor an establishment Republican over Michelle Bachmann—take it to the bank that Bachmann is the better bet.

Jacob Sallum, a master at sweating the smaller, safer stuff, has concluded that Bachmann, one of the few people in Congress who understands and protests monetary policy, is a philosophical spender because of the “agricultural subsidies her family farm has [allegedly] received.”

Sallum’s case is not worth a straw. I am sure one can find occasions when Ron Paul has fallen short on such minor (albeit important) matters. But when it comes to the big issues—monetary policy (around which the girls at Reason cannot wrap their heads)—he more than makes up for it. Ditto Michelle Bachmann, who joined Ron Paul to do battle against Ben Bernanke.

Of course, the “High Priests Of Pomposity” at Reason panned Ron Paul too.

Reason is famous for its “35 Heroes of Freedom,” which established their criteria for “cool and cosmopolitan”: William Burroughs, a drug addled, Beat-Generation wife killer, whose “work is mostly gibberish and his literary influence baleful,” was included, as well as Larry Flynt, Madonna, Martina Navratilova and Dennis Rodman.

Madonna Reason has exalted for, as they put it, leading “MTV’s glorious parade of freaks, gender-benders, and weirdos who helped broaden the palette of acceptable cultural identities and destroy whatever vestiges of repressive mainstream sensibilities still remained.” This sounds like the unscrambled, strange dialect spoken by a professor of Women’s and Gender Studies.”

I mean “Womyn’s Studies.”

If you lost the post’s thread, here’s the gist: Bachmann understands monetary policy and grasps its importance. Republican leaders, who don’t, are choosing to back their boy over Bachmann for the position of GOP conference chair. Beltway libertarians are backing the boy and his masters.

It Takes A Man …

Ilana Mercer, IMMIGRATION, Iraq, Just War, Military, Neoconservatism, Republicans, Ron Paul, War

My colleague Vox Day penned an important column about foreign policy, last week. Sadly, his “Better Late Than Never” WND piece will be ignored by the self-satisfied conservative Idiocracy, which has an allergy to truth and reason.

“The so-called ‘isolationist’ Right had it right all along. Neither Saddam Hussein nor the Taliban ever presented one-tenth the danger to Americans that criminal immigrants, legal and illegal, pose to them. And yet the conservative media has been willing to spend more than $1 trillion on replacing a secular socialist government with a radical Shiite one and expelling a Taliban government in favor of one that is merely Taliban-influenced while nonsensically continuing to call for more immigration.

“But the fact is that there is absolutely no past or present justification for the invasions of either Afghanistan or Iraq when considered from the perspective of the American national interest. One could make a much more rational national-security case for declaring war against Mexico, Canada or even Honduras. And there is absolutely no justification for the continued military occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq nine and seven years on.”

Vox expresses regret for his initial support for the war and points out the signal significance of Joseph Farah’s recent renunciation of the current errant foreign policy.

The following words I especially appreciated:

Only a very few commentators, such as Antiwar.com’s Justin Raimondo and WorldNetDaily’s own Pat Buchanan and Ilana Mercer, can truly say that they were opposed from the start to the expensive, unconstitutional and ultimately useless abuses of the American military that have been inflicted upon it by Republican and Democratic commanders in chief over the last nine years.

It takes a man …