"I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them."
March 5, 2010 Restore America by Getting Government Under Control At no other point in recent decades has the political climate presented us with so great an opportunity to return our nation to prosperity and to reclaim the freedoms big government has stripped away from us.
Thanks to the tremendous growth of the Internet, as well as the unprecedented interest in the message of individual liberty kindled by such vast access to information, millions of Americans are now organizing and taking action.
In the last few years, I have had the opportunity to travel extensively throughout the country, and the unique people of each area I have visited have only deepened my conviction that no other idea can unify, excite and mobilize Americans as powerfully as the message of peace, prosperity and freedom.
- by Ron Paul / DesMoinesRegister.com
Ron Paul - Fox Business 03/03/10 On Wednesday, March 3, 2010, Congressman Paul appeared on Fox Business' "Varney & Company" to discuss the economy and the results of out of control federal spending.
My Plan for a Freedom President Since my 2008 campaign for the presidency I have often been asked, "How would a constitutionalist president go about dismantling the welfare-warfare state and restoring a constitutional republic?" This is a very important question, because without a clear road map and set of priorities, such a president runs the risk of having his pro-freedom agenda stymied by the various vested interests that benefit from big government.
Of course, just as the welfare-warfare state was not constructed in 100 days, it could not be dismantled in the first 100 days of any presidency. While our goal is to reduce the size of the state as quickly as possible, we should always make sure our immediate proposals minimize social disruption and human suffering. Thus, we should not seek to abolish the social safety net overnight because that would harm those who have grown dependent on government-provided welfare. Instead, we would want to give individuals who have come to rely on the state time to prepare for the day when responsibility for providing aide is returned to those organizations best able to administer compassionate and effective help - churches and private charities.
Now, this need for a transition period does not apply to all types of welfare. For example, I would have no problem defunding corporate welfare programs, such as the Export-Import Bank or the TARP bank bailouts, right away. I find it difficult to muster much sympathy for the CEO's of Lockheed Martin and Goldman Sachs.
No matter what the president wants to do, most major changes in government programs would require legislation to be passed by Congress
- by Ron Paul / LewRockwell.com
Operation Health Freedom Campaign for Liberty believes America's health care system is in desperate need of reform, but current proposals only cement the status quo by mandating further government interference and requiring Americans to either carry a government-approved plan or surrender more of their hard-earned money to the IRS.
There is a real alternative to yielding more power over our lives to Washington: implementing a plan centered on freedom, choice, and faith in the American taxpayers that they know how to spend their money better than some unelected bureaucrat.
In pursuit of this alternative, Campaign for Liberty is proud to unveil our Health Freedom Plan.
- by Campaign For Liberty
Followers of the Texas Congressman Represent the Real Conservative Movement When Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina was censured by various GOP county committees in his own state recently, Graham blamed it on "Ron Paul people." When Florida governor and U.S. Senate candidate Charlie Crist was defeated in a Republican straw poll by challenger Marco Rubio in December, Crist complained it was nothing more than "Ron Paul people."
At this year's 2010 Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C., there were plenty of Ron Paul people, enough to deliver the congressman a first-place victory in the annual CPAC straw poll, which has long been considered a decent gauge of the GOP's mindset.
But when Paul's victory was announced, much of the CPAC crowd booed. Those pesky Ron Paul people had struck again, it seemed. Many Republican establishment types quickly dismissed the poll. But two glaring questions remain: Who is it that Paul's critics prefer? And what kind of "people" are they?
- by Jack Hunter / Campaign For Liberty
Extremism in the Defense of Liberty Today's radicalized grassroots Right might be "extreme" in their devotion to limited government--they're also more traditionally conservative than anything the GOP has represented in decades.
Without record levels of welfare, unemployment and other government benefits as well as tax cuts last year, the income of U.S. households would have plunged by an astonishing $723 billion — more than four times the record $167 billion drop reported last month by the Commerce Department.
Moreover, for the first time since the Great Depression, Americans took more aid from the government than they paid in taxes.
The figures show the devastating results of the massive job losses last year and indicate that the economic recovery that began last summer is tenuous and has a long way to go before many Americans resume life as normal, analysts said.
- by Patrice Hill / The Washington Times
Liberal Delusions About Freedom To combat the town-hall protests that sprang up around the nation against President Obama's health-care plan, one of the favorite tactics employed by liberals was to question the sanity of the protesters. Anyone who showed up at such meetings angrily protesting Obama's plan to socialize medicine was termed a crazy.
That was especially true if a protester happened to be combining freedom of speech with the right to bear arms, as some protesters in New Hampshire and Arizona did. That drove liberals up the wall, given their deep antipathy toward gun rights and the Second Amendment.
But who really are the crazies around here? Let's examine the issue. Among the points that liberals made to buttress their claim that the protesters were crazy was the comparison that some of the protesters made between Obama's economic philosophy and that of the National Socialists under Hitler.
Indeed, according to the liberals, the notion that Obama's plan for America was socialistic was itself just crazy. After all, everyone knows that America has a free-enterprise system, one that was saved by Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, an economic program that Obama, like other liberals, extols and wishes to build upon.
Yet, let's analyze that comparison that some of the protesters were making and the insanity and irrationality that liberals claim it represents. I believe we'll find that when it comes to sanity and rationality, those protesters had a much firmer grip on reality than the liberals who are criticizing them.
- by Jacob G. Hornberger
Abortion and the Health Bill It's now becoming clear that Barack Obama is willing to put everything on the table in order to be the president who passes health-care reform. Everything, that is, except a ban on federal funding for abortion. Last September, the president promised that "no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions, and federal conscience laws will remain in place." Yet the legislation most likely to move forward in Congress would be the single greatest expansion of abortion since the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. The White House knows how to turn Mr. Obama's September commitment into legislative action. I met with senior White House officials and told them that only adding a so-called Hyde Amendment to the health-care reform bills would fulfill the president's promise to protect Americans from subsidizing abortion. The Hyde Amendment dates back to the 1970s, when congressional leaders discovered that Medicaid was paying for nearly 300,000 abortions a year. Similar amendments have been added to health-care bills ever since. When confronted by House Minority Leader John Boehner about abortion funding during the health-care summit last week, the president dropped his head and looked down at the table. How revealing
- by Charmaine Yoest / Wall Street Journal
Who Poses the Greater Threat? While American politicians and intellectuals have not reached the depths of tyrants such as Lenin, Stalin, Mao and Hitler, they share a common vision. Tyrants denounce free markets and voluntary exchange. They are the chief supporters of reduced private property rights, reduced rights to profits, and they are anti-competition and pro-monopoly. They are pro-control and coercion, by the state. These Americans who run Washington, and their intellectual supporters, believe they have superior wisdom and greater intelligence than the masses. They believe they have been ordained to forcibly impose that wisdom on the rest of us. Like any other tyrant, they have what they consider good reasons for restricting the freedom of others. A tyrant's primary agenda calls for the elimination or attenuation of the market. Why? Markets imply voluntary exchange and tyrants do trust that people behaving voluntarily will do what the tyrant thinks they should do. Therefore, they seek to replace the market with economic planning and regulation, which is little more than the forcible superseding of other people's plans by the powerful elite.
We Americans have forgotten founder Thomas Paine's warning that "Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one."
- by Walter E. Williams / Creators Syndicate
Is The Recovery Real? Happy news! The government has come up with a 5.9 percent GDP growth rate in the fourth quarter of 2009. The recession is over.
Or is it? Statistician John Williams has informed us that 69 percent of this growth, or 4.1 percentage points, is the result of inventory accumulation. That leaves a 1.8 percent growth rate, and the 1.8 percent is likely due to the underestimate of inflation and other statistical problems.
The Federal Reserve's own monetary evidence contradicts the recovery assurances from Fed chairman Ben Bernanke. The Federal Reserve continues to pour massive reserves into the banks. The monetary base, which consists of currency in circulation and bank reserves (the basis for new loans), has surged from $850 billion in 2009 to $2.2 trillion on February 24.
Despite this potential for massive new money creation, the broadest measure of money growth is still contracting. The banks are too impaired and so are consumers for the banks to create new money by making loans.
The economy, in other words, is going nowhere.
- by Paul Craig Roberts / VDare.com
Central Banks Can't Stop Global Unraveling This is what happened in Japan. This is what is happening now in America. This will surely happen in Europe as EU-crats prepare to bail out Greece and Lord knows how many other countries. A short, terrible downturn may have been turned into a decade's worth of agony or worse. Of course, it doesn't have to be that bad for everyone. We can still buy gold and silver and take delivery. We can trim our debts and streamline our finances. We can do for ourselves, all the sensible things that government - and those who stand behind it - will not.
- by The Daily Bell
David Frum: Hatchet Man for Ben Bernanke David Frum has written an article for CNN, "Ron Paul's money plan is far from golden." It is an attack on anything resembling a gold coin standard. It is therefore a defense of central banking in general and the Federal Reserve System in particular.
Who is David Frum? He is a Canadian immigrant who studied history at Yale and earned a law degree at the Harvard Law School. He has always earned a living as a journalist. He has long been employed by the neoconservative movement. He became a U.S. citizen in 2007.
In 2001, he got a job at the White House as a speech writer. It was Frum who coined at least part of the phrase, "axis of evil," which identified North Korea, Iraq, and Iran as the three most dangerous tyrannies of the decade. George W. Bush used the phrase in his State of the Union Address on January 29, 2002, his State of the Union Address after 9-11. That speech was part of his run-up for the Iraq War.
- by Gary North / LewRockwell.com
Frank Asks Bernanke to Probe Fed on Watergate, Iraq (Correct) House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank asked Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke to investigate allegations of Fed involvement in the Watergate scandal and Iraqi weapons purchases in the 1970s and 1980s.
Frank, 69, said the Fed must address the charges because "continued concern about political interference" with the Fed and "allegations about a lack of transparency." Bernanke and other Fed officials are trying to fend off a measure offered by Paul, which passed the House in December, that would open the Fed to audits of interest-rate decisions.
"These specific allegations you've made I think are absolutely bizarre, and I have absolutely no knowledge of anything remotely like what you just described,” Bernanke told Paul, a Texas Republican who wrote the 2009 book "End the Fed," during last week's hearing.
- by Scott Lanman / Business Week
Ron Paul: Fed Needs to Clear the Air on its History The Federal Reserve may grow in power under the Senate's plans for financial reform, but Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) said on Washington Unplugged today that Congress has abdicated its oversight responsibilities, allowing the Fed to funnel money to whomever it pleases -- even possibly the Watergate burglars.
Regardless of whether such a plot is true, "it gives you a good reason to audit the Federal Reserve," Paul told moderator Bob Schieffer.
- by Stephanie Condon / CBS News
Big Brother Wants to Know All About You: The American Community Survey Over the past several years, I have been barraged with emails from Americans expressing their dismay over the American Community Survey, the latest census form to hit randomly selected households on a continuous basis. Unlike the traditional census, which collects data every ten years and is now underway, the American Community Survey is taken every year at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars. And at 28 pages (with an additional 16-page instruction packet), it contains some of the most detailed and intrusive questions ever put forth in a census questionnaire. These concern matters that the government simply has no business knowing, including a person's job, income, physical and emotional health, family status, place of residence and intimate personal and private habits.
- by John W. Whitehead / The Rutherford Institute
The Department of Homeland Security's top cybersecurity official told CNET on Wednesday that the department may eventually extend its Einstein technology, which is designed to detect and prevent electronic attacks, to networks operated by the private sector. The technology was created for federal networks.
Greg Schaffer, assistant secretary for cybersecurity and communications, said in an interview that the department is evaluating whether Einstein "makes sense for expansion to critical infrastructure spaces" over time.
- by Declan McCullagh / CNET
White House Cyber Czar: 'There Is No Cyberwar' Howard Schmidt, the new cybersecurity czar for the Obama administration, has a short answer for the drumbeat of rhetoric claiming the United States is caught up in a cyberwar that it is losing. "There is no cyberwar," Schmidt told Wired.com in a sit-down interview Wednesday at the RSA Security Conference in San Francisco. "I think that is a terrible metaphor and I think that is a terrible concept," Schmidt said. "There are no winners in that environment." Instead, Schmidt said the government needs to focus its cybersecurity efforts to fight online crime and espionage. His stance contradicts Michael McConnell, the former director of national intelligence who made headlines last week when he testified to Congress that the country was already in the midst of a cyberwar - and was losing it. Schmidt's official title is cyber-security coordinator at the White House, a job he took over just before Christmas. Schmidt has no budgetary authority, but he said that doesn't make him powerless, because his office is in the White House. He's been there before as an adviser to President George W. Bush
- by Ryan Singel / Wired
Ron Paul on Alex Jones TV - Part 2 Paul Exposes CIA & Federal Reserve's Drug Running Business
Climate Scientists Plot to Fight Back at Skeptics Undaunted by a rash of scandals over the science underpinning climate change, top climate researchers are plotting to respond with what one scientist involved said needs to be "an outlandishly aggressively partisan approach" to gut the credibility of skeptics.
In private e-mails obtained by The Washington Times, climate scientists at the National Academy of Sciences say they are tired of "being treated like political pawns" and need to fight back in kind. Their strategy includes forming a nonprofit group to organize researchers and use their donations to challenge critics by running a back-page ad in the New York Times.
"Most of our colleagues don't seem to grasp that we're not in a gentlepersons' debate, we're in a street fight against well-funded, merciless enemies who play by entirely different rules," Paul R. Ehrlich, a Stanford University researcher, said in one of the e-mails.
Some scientists question the tactic and say they should focus instead on perfecting their science, but the researchers who are organizing the effort say the political battle is eroding confidence in their work.
- by Stephen Dinan / The Washington Times
Genuine American Exceptionalism on Due Process The Obama administration has made explicitly clear its intention to deny civilian trials to scores of detainees, by sending some to military commissions and imprisoning others indefinitely without any charges. And for those cases where it has deigned to provide real due process -- such as its decision to try the 9/11 defendants in a criminal court -- it is moving in the wrong direction. Obama officials are clearly signaling their intention to reverse that decision and instead place those defendants before military commissions, and yesterday, yet another piece appeared -- this time in Politico -- describing the beautiful, loving, cooperative relationship between Rahm Emanuel and Lindsey Graham, which is now "embracing a wide-ranging deal pitched by Graham that would shut down the prison [at Guantanamo]; provide funding to move detainees to Thomson, Ill.; keep the Sept. 11 trials out of civilian courts; and create broad new powers to hold terror suspects indefinitely." And the endless cavalcade of Rahm-planted, Rahm-Was-Right articles (see the latest from the Post today) invariably features his opposition to civilian trials for accused Terrorists as proof of his Centrist though mistakenly rejected wisdom.
In contrast to America's still-growing refusal to accord basic due process to accused Terrorists, consider how Pakistan treats foreigners whom it apprehends within its borders on serious charges of Terrorism:
- by Glenn Greenwald / Salon
Why Would Anyone Ever Attack America? Longtime White House Press Corps reporter Helen Thomas discusses the culture of softball political journalism, Obamas continuance of the US nuclear ambiguity policy regarding Israel and John Brennans ridiculous response to the question, Why do the terrorists attack us?
Many Voices Calling for War with Iran Wanting to go to war with Iran has created some very strange bedfellows. Leading neoconservative Daniel Pipes' assertion that President Barack Obama can salvage his presidency and get reelected by attacking Iran is about as low as it gets, suggesting as it does that an act of war can and should serve as a diversion from a failed domestic agenda. The soldiers and civilians who would inevitably die in such a conflict might not agree with Pipes that all is fair in politics. They would no doubt consider themselves betrayed and manipulated by a venal and disconnected political leadership, but no matter. It would not be a first time a neocon would consider a non-neocon casualty little more than a disagreeable statistic.
Sarah Palin is on the Pipes bandwagon, showing up at the mid-February Nashville Tea Party convention sporting an Israeli flag lapel pin and subsequently urging the president to do the right thing in supporting Israel by attacking Iran. As she put it, President Obama would improve his chances of re-election by showing people how tough he is. Pipes is at least smart enough to understand the implications of what he was saying, but Palin apparently was just parroting a line fed to her by Bill Kristol or one of her other handlers. Even Dick Cheney found the Palin line to be too much, pointing out that no one should go to war for reasons of domestic politics. Whether he actually believes that or not is unclear.
But possibly the most bizarre commentary supporting war with Iran was penned by Anne Applebaum for the Washington Post on February 23rd.
- by Philip Giraldi / Antiwar.com
U.S. Tightens Missile Shield Encirclement Of China And Russia So far this year the United States has succeeded in inflaming tensions with China and indefinitely holding up a new strategic arms reduction treaty with Russia through its relentless pursuit of global interceptor missile deployments.
On January 29 the White House confirmed the completion of a nearly $6.5 billion weapons transfer to Taiwan which includes 200 advanced Patriot anti-ballistic missiles. Earlier in the same month it was reported that Washington is also to provide Taiwan with eight frigates which Taipei intends to equip with the Aegis Combat System that includes the capacity for ship-based Standard Missile-3 interceptors.
The Aegis sea-based component of the expanding U.S. interceptor missile system already includes Japan, South Korea and Australia, and with Taiwan added China would be justified in being apprehensive.
On February 28 the U.S. House and Senate foreign affairs committees permitted the "sale to Taiwan of missiles, helicopters and ships valued at about $6.4 billion" despite weeks of protests from China. "The U.S. Defense Department wants to sell Taiwan the most advanced Patriot anti-missile system….The system, valued at $2.8 billion, would add to Taiwan's network of 22 missile sites around the country...." [1]
- by Rick Rozoff / Stop NATO
Twelve New England Towns Demand 9/11 Reinvestigation A new movement to reinvestigate the 9/11 attacks is gaining pace in the US. With major public support, 12 towns are set to decide whether to ask the federal government for a new independent probe.
New York is dubbed as the Empire State for its wealth and resources and is rightfully regarded as America's most famous city, a beacon of fashion, finance and fast paced action.
New Hampshire is the Granite State of so-called self sufficiency. Less flash and cash, most famous for hosting the first U.S. presidential primary.
New York and New Hampshire are more than 200 miles apart, but for all that distance, the two US locations intersect on one issue: the 9/11 attacks. While it was in Manhattan where three buildings fell, the people of Keene, New Hampshire are pushing for a new probe to find out why.
At 81 years old, Gerhard Bedding devotes nearly all his time to the Vote for Answers campaign. Though the movement for a new 9/11 investigation began in the Big Apple, it's seeing more success in New Hampshire.
- by Russia Today
As Predicted, Pentagon Shooting Blamed On 9/11 Truth Just two days after we warned of false flag domestic attacks that would be blamed on the federal government's political adversaries were all but inevitable, a Californian man attacked the Pentagon last night in a shooting that wounded two police officers and has since been blamed on the John Patrick Bedell's advocacy for 9/11 truth.
On Wednesday we explained how a Southern Poverty Law Center report which demonized We Are Change 9/11 truth organizations in the same breath as violent racist skinhead groups was part of a preparatory set-up for violent domestic acts that would be blamed on anti-government extremists.
We pointed out that since examples of Americans committing violence in pursuit of their political beliefs, FBI patsy Timothy McVeigh aside, were thin on the ground, organizations like the SPLC were begging for such incidents to occur in order to provide the federal government with the pretext to crack down on dissent and silence free speech on the Internet.
Low and behold, last night 36-year-old John Patrick Bedell calmly walked up to a subway station immediately adjacent to the Pentagon building, pulled out a gun and opened fire at point blank range.
- by Paul Joseph Watson / Prison Planet.com
There are five reasons that the mainstream media is worthless.
1. Self-Censorship by Journalists
Initially, there is tremendous self-censorship by journalists.
- by Snardfarker
Muslims Are Their Own Worst Enemy Muslims are numerous but powerless. Divisions among Muslims, especially between Sunni and Shi'ites, have consigned the Muslim Middle East to almost a century of Western control. Muslims cannot even play together. The Islamic Solidarity Games, a regional version of the Olympics, which were to be held in April in Iran, have been cancelled because the Iranians and the Arabs cannot agree on whether to call the body of water that separates Iran from the Arabian Peninsula the Persian Gulf or the Arabian Gulf.
Muslim disunity has made it possible for Israel to dispossess the Palestinians, for the U.S. to invade Iraq, and for the U.S. to rule much of the region through puppets. For example, in exchange for faithful service, Egypt receives $1.5 billion a year from Washington, which enables President Mubarak to buy off opposition. The opposition had rather have the money than support the Palestinians. Therefore, Egypt cooperates with Israel and the U.S. in the blockade of Gaza.
Another factor is the willingness of some Muslims to betray their own kind for U.S. dollars.
- by Paul Craig Roberts / VDare.com
It's Time for Israel's Friends To Condemn Its Acts Of Terrorism By and large a one-dimensional approach has characterised our approach to understanding the phenomenon of terrorism. However, the recent killing of a Hamas figure, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, in Dubai should make us cast our net wider to focus also on state terrorism.
The Dubai police have claimed with almost undisputed evidence that the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad, was behind the killing. Israel has, as usual, maintained a policy of ambiguity by neither confirming nor denying Mossad's actions, although some of its political leaders, specifically the Opposition Leader, Tzipi Livni, have applauded the killing on the grounds that Mabhouh was a terrorist and deserved to be eliminated.
If it is proved beyond doubt that Mossad agents, using forged passports in the names of British, French, Irish, German and Australian citizens, perpetrated the act, the killing clearly underlines a disturbing aspect of Israeli behaviour.
It constitutes a blatant act of state terrorism, which places Israel in a position parallel to the very forces that it has unfailingly condemned as terrorist groups or networks.
- by Amin Saikal / Political Theatrics
Shaking Up Bible Prophecy End times' speculators look to the Bible for signs and wonders of the last days, then predict that the end is near because we experience the kind of natural disasters the Bible mentions. Earthquakes have always been happening--practically everyday. What make the earthquakes of the end times unique is what Gary DeMar sheds light on in today's show.
Wyoming Passes the Firearms Freedom Act Wyoming Senate passed HB95, the Firearms Freedom Act, by a vote of 30–0. (h/t Kristy Tyrney, Wyoming10A.org) The bill states: "A personal firearm, a firearm action or receiver, a firearm accessory, or ammunition that is manufactured commercially or privately in the state to be used or sold within the state is not subject to federal law or federal regulation, including registration, under the authority of congress to regulate interstate commerce." The Wyoming House already passed the bill last week, and it will now be transmitted to Governor Freudenthal's desk for signature. In 2009, both Tennessee and Montana passed the Act into state law. Last week, Utah's Governor Herbert made that state the 3rd.
- by Michael Boldin / LewRockwell.com
Hooray For Starbucks The major news media was replete with reports over the weekend that the coffee company, Starbucks, "has no problem with customers packing heat while placing their orders. The coffee giant says it won't take issue with gun owners who take advantage of 'open carry' laws and bring firearms into their restaurant." To tell you the truth, I'm not sure why this is even considered "newsworthy." Perhaps because Starbucks is a Seattle-based company that caters to the "yuppie" crowd? Maybe because the anti-gun national news media is shocked and chagrined at Starbucks' statement? Who knows?
- by Chuck Baldwin / NewsWithViews
CPAC 2010 Liberty Forum On Thursday, February 18, hundreds of freedom activists gathered at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel for "Liberty Forum 2010," one of C4L's featured events at this year's Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). Speakers included C4L President John Tate, historian (and Forum emcee) Tom Woods, Judge Andrew Napolitano, and Congressman Ron Paul.
According to an expansive study by the Pew Research Center, the Millennial generation is the so-called "new face of America." Comprised of 50 million young people between the ages of 18-29, the Millennials have been so dubbed because they are the first generation to come of age in the new millennium. However, the study, which aims to shed light on what America might be like in the future, raises some provocative questions about this up-and-coming generation of citizens and leaders and what they might mean for the future of our nation.
- by John W. Whitehead / The Rutherford Institute
Christians Need To Prepare For Institutional Collapse - Including Religious Insitutions American institutions of government/politics, industry, and economics are in a state of collapse and the leaders of those institutions do not show the courage to correct their flawed paths to restore America to the independent, self sufficient republic of her birth.
The collapse of those institutions has the potential to cause America's institutionalized church-particularly American Christian Protestantism-to collapse as well.
Consequently those who claim to be Christians will need to begin making their own decisions on the world around them without the help of talking points of huge denominations or para-church organizations. Before rank-and-file Christians consider this to be such a frightening undertaking, look at the growth of "religious" organizations during the past, let's say, 37 years and the coinciding social slide that has absorbed America. A very strong argument could be made that Christian devotion of time and resources to fighting battles against an ever-corrupting political and governing system has been an abject failure. Christians need to recognize that.
Those who claim to be Christians have certainly been part of the most damaging causes of American social decline. Christians have divorced at rates that are even higher than non-Christians. Christians routinely call government to honor the limits of the U.S. Constitution, but when it comes to the War Against International Terrorism, support for Israel, or national laws supporting a "Christian" social agenda, the Constitution is an after thought. How might America's current situation be different had "Christians" not given themselves to hypocrisy in these few areas?
- by Bob Strodtbeck / EtherZone
Jack Cafferty Interviews Ron Paul 2/27/10 The US Government going bankrupt
Paul Burned by Tea Party Blowback Rep. Ron Paul, the libertarian-oriented Republican whose 2008 presidential run provided kindling for the Tea Party movement, suddenly finds himself dealing with the blowback: a handful of Tea Party-inspired candidates are seeking to dislodge him in Tuesday's Texas Republican primary.
It's an unusual turn of events for a veteran congressman who has reached stardom in conservative populist circles and who just last week emerged as the victor of the presidential straw poll at the Conservative Political Action Conference.
Yet despite his solid anti-establishment credentials and non-conformist views, Paul finds himself under siege from three Republicans who are embracing many of the themes that have defined Paul's career. At the heart of the resistance is the notion that the 10-term Paul has gone Washington, abandoning his constituents as he pursues his white whale ... the presidency.
"I personally think he'll win that primary with 60-plus percent of the vote, even with three opponents, so I find it kind of interesting," said Mary Anne Wyatt, chairwoman of the Victoria County Republican Party. "There's no question that Rep. Paul is very popular in his district and has been for some time. It hasn't been an enigma-it's been a fact."
"I don't think he views any of us as a threat," conceded Graney, who says he has spent $80,000 on his campaign.
A Moore Information survey conducted for Paul's campaign showed Paul picking up 74 percent of the vote in a primary contest. Seventy-nine percent said they had a favorable impression of Paul, with 84 percent approving of his job performance.
- by Alex Isenstadt / Politico
Intervention and Economic Crisis No supporter of the market economy could have been surprised when the recent financial crisis was inevitably blamed on "capitalism" and "deregulation." The free market, we were told, was a recipe for financial instability. "Advocates of the free market must confront the fact that both the Great Depression and the current financial chaos were preceded by years of laissez-faire economic policies," wrote Katrina van den Heuvel, editor of The Nation, and author Eric Schlossel, in September 2008.
It is not enough to call this a distortion of the truth. It is a grotesque distortion, worthy of the Soviet politburo. The crisis is in fact the altogether predictable fruit of massive government and central-bank distortions of the economy. That may be why the free-market economists of the Austrian School were practically the only ones to have seen it coming.
- by Tom Woods / Campaign For Liberty
Who is the Enemy, Dr Ron Paul? Recently, Representative Ron Paul addressed the House [paraphrased here], and after depicting the absurdity, cost and futility of fighting our Middle Eastern wars, asked: "Who is the enemy? We don't even know who the enemy is! If we don't know who the enemy is, how will we know if we won?" Though I disagree with his Party's platform and agenda, I admire Ron Paul's bold independent position and thoroughly uphold his viewpoint and opinion. Dr Paul is perfectly correct. Who is the enemy?
What does an individual do when he can no longer pay his debt? He borrows until credit is exhausted. Then, admitting failure, he files for bankruptcy and surrenders his assets, possessions and property in the hope his debts are discharged. This is standard procedure that every adult citizen understands and agrees to accept in the course of running a business or running a household when it fails.
What does America do when it can longer pay its debt? It borrows until credit is exhausted, then prints more money. Finally, when credit is exhausted and hyperinflation has consumed whatever economy is standing, unlike any person or corporation, it does not file for bankruptcy or seek arrangements with its creditors; instead, America resorts to criminal activities and threatens its creditors with violence and war. It seizes (steals) assets, particular national assets of third-world countries. For political cover, it trains its people to believe the creditor is the enemy, when all along the enemy is the debt.
- by Michael_T_Bucci / The Market Oracle
Time for Government to Reverse Its Failed Policies Congressman Ron Paul talks about last week's hearings with Ben Bernanke and Hillary Clinton and says it's time for government to reverse its failed policies so our economy can get back on track.
A Titanic Budget in an Ocean of Icebergs Send up a flare! The 2011 federal budget has sprung some leaks in the midst of a storm. Not sure there's enough money for life rafts! Forget women and children first! Buffeted by economic hard times, the 2,585-page, $3.8 trillion document is already taking on water, though this won't be obvious to you if you're reading the mainstream media. Let's start with the absolute basics: 59% of the budget's spending is dedicated to mandatory programs like Medicaid, Medicare, Unemployment Insurance, Social Security, and now Pell Grants; 34% is to be spent on "discretionary programs," including education, transportation, housing, and the military; 7% will be used to service the national debt. A serious look at this budget document reveals some "leaks" -- two in actual spending practices and two in the basic assumptions that undergird the budget itself. Ship-shape as it may look on the surface, this is a budget perilously close to an iceberg, and it's not clear whether the captain of the ship will heed the obvious warning signs. Ordinary Americans will largely be left in a sink or swim world and the waters will be very, very cold
- by Jo Comerford / TomDispatch.com
I.M.F. Chief Suggests Look at New Reserve Currency The chief of the International Monetary Fund said Friday that the organization should reorient itself to better detect systemic risks to the global economy and quickly step in with emergency loans when financial crises emerge.
The I.M.F. leader, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, also floated the idea of creating a global reserve currency that could serve as an alternative to the dollar.
- by Sewell Chan / The New York Times
Peter Schiff on Freedom Watch with Judge Napolitano 24 Feb 2010
Does GOP have Death Wish? It's not surprising that there are some prominent conservatives who are willing to betray the American taxpayer to get a new amnesty for 15 to 20 million illegal aliens. But do they have to add insult to injury by lying about amnesty's impact on the Republican Party? At the recent Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington, D.C., Americans for Tax Reform President Grover Norquist gave enthusiastic backing to a new group formed for the express purpose of pushing new amnesty legislation in alliance with congressional Democrats and the Obama White House. When everyone else is declaring amnesty dead in the water for 2010, Norquist and his business-lobby friends ride to the rescue. But what makes the new "Latino Partnership for Conservative Principles" especially deceptive and troublesome are the lies Norquist and his allies must tell about the so-called "Hispanic vote" to make this gambit credible. The mantra for the new amnesty scenario is a seductive political pragmatism: Republicans are being told they must support a new amnesty or "lose the Hispanic vote for the next 50 years."
- by Tom Tancredo / WorldNetDaily
4 Health Care Questions and Answers Can the government force you to buy health insurance? Why can't I buy health insurance from anyone who wants to sell it to me?
- by Andrew P. Napolitano / LewRockwell.com
Socialist Healthcare's Power Grab Socialism is nothing new in America. Americans have conditioned themselves to accept little parts of socialistic policies throughout the last 100 years. In the year 2010, Americans face federal socialized healthcare; yet one more government takeover of free enterprise. If America continues down this path, we will soon be no better off than Greece with more than half of the country working for the state.
- by The Gary DeMar Show
Why Pharmaceuticals Might be Called Weapons of Mass Prescription Most people are familiar with traditional weapons of mass destruction such biological weapons, nuclear weapons and chemical weapons. The point of all such weapons of mass destruction is to inflict a large number of casualties on civilian populations as a way to cripple a nation into political or military submission.
What if a nation wanted to reduce its own civilian population but do it covertly? One way to accomplish that would be to slowly poison the civilian population through exposure to toxic chemicals, heavy metals, hormone-disrupting molecules and nerve toxins.
And as any terrorist can tell you, the most covert way to accomplish that would be to inject such chemicals into the everyday products that people routinely consume: Water, food, personal care products and medicines. I even published a cartoon with this theme a couple of years ago: http://www.naturalnews.com/021880_w...
Here's another interesting fact: If you examine what's in the water, food, products and medicines sold across North America, you'll discover a dangerous assortment of chemicals that, taken together, could quite reasonably be considered weapons of mass destruction.
- by Mike Adams / Natural News
Medina has become a political phenomenon in Texas. Emerging as a genuine star of the rightwing populist Tea Party movement, she delivers a fiery message of slashing taxes and the abolition of almost all forms of federal government, and issues dire warnings that President Obama is taking America down a slippery slope to Soviet-style communism.
It's working. Previously unheard of by the vast majority of Texans, Medina has set the race for governor on fire, upsetting the primary contest between the incumbent, Rick Perry, and Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison.
- by Paul Harris, The Observer / Guardian UK
You Can Call Him Al ... But Al Won't Call You Back Al Gore won a Nobel Prize and an Oscar for his film, An Inconvenient Truth. But in the last three months, as global warming has gone from a scientific near-certitude to the subject of satire, Gore -- the public face of global warming -- has been silent on the topic.
The former vice president apparently finds it inconvenient even to answer calls to testify before the U.S. Senate. You can call him Al . . . but he won't call back.
On Tuesday, Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe -- a prominent skeptic of global warming theory and the Republican leader of the Senate's Environment and Public Works Committee -- issued a request for Gore to come testify on global warming. In an interview with FoxNews.com, Inhofe said he wants Gore to appear because "it will be interesting to ask him on what science he based his movie," a film the senator considers "science fiction."
- by Gene J. Koprowski / FOXNews.com
The Cost of Our Foreign Operations On Thursday, Congressman Paul questioned Secretary of State Hillary Clinton about spending at the State Department during her appearance before the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
Ron Paul vs. Big-Government Conservatives An op-ed entitled "Conservatives' Isolationist Dalliance" in the Washington Times today by Jeffrey T. Kuhner, president of the conservative Edmund Burke Institute, is an excellent example of the difficult task that Ron Paul has in convincing conservatives to abandon their devotion to Big Government in foreign affairs.
Praising Paul for his limited-government domestic policy, Kuhner then proceeds to excoriate him for his limited-government foreign policy. To make his case, Kuhner goes back to World War II -- the so-called "good war," pointing out that "old isolationist conservatives were prepared to abandon Europe to Hitler's Germany."
Kuhner also denies that the U.S. government "imperialist" policies in the Middle East produced the September 11 attacks. The attacks, he claims, are because the Jihadists "seek to restore a medieval Islamic caliphate" and that "America's support for Israel or foreign aid to Egypt is simply a rationalization for their revolutionary aims."
What Kuhner and indeed so many other conservatives cannot bring themselves to recognize is that it is conservatives themselves who are doing the rationalizing. Unable to abandon their deep commitment to Big Government, they inevitably seek out, consciously or unconsciously, every rationalization possible to maintain Big Government.
- by Jacob G. Hornberger / Campaign For Liberty
US Rhetoric Strays Far from America's Founding Values The last US administration displayed a rather perverse and dangerous penchant for dressing up their behaviour, providing it with religious or patriotic intent. The former president George W Bush packaged the Iraq war, for example, as America's mission – having been charged by God to bring the gift of freedom to the world.
The "war on terror" was presented through the lens of the Second World War and the Cold War and transformed into a battle of cosmic proportions against those who "hate our freedom" and "our way of life". US troops who were sent into battle in Iraq were seen as "defending our freedom" or "making America safe".
One could, of course, argue with this crass manipulation of potent symbols, though, at the time, few did. Politicians were especially hesitant to criticise this hyper-inflated rhetoric, not wanting to appear insensitive to the public's fear or disrespectful of the sacrifices of those who had died or been maimed in the Iraq war.
Left unchallenged, this abuse of language continued to grow and become accepted in some quarters, doing damage to our political discourse and distorting our sense of reality.
- by James Zogby / The National
Ron Paul's Conservative Foreign Policy Virtually alone, Congressman Ron Paul offers an unabashed conservative foreign policy.
Left and Right Against War, Part 87 On February 20, a meeting took place in Washington, D.C., between progressives, libertarians, and conservatives who deviate from the bipartisan foreign-policy consensus and favor an antiwar, anti-imperial alternative. Participants were indeed all over the ideological map, as these interesting summaries (1, 2) reveal. (I was invited to attend but could not make it; I'd already been at CPAC and needed to get home to my wife and our new baby.) Does this mean a genuine cross-ideological coalition against war is brewing? I would like nothing more than to think so. I am confident that many libertarians and conservatives would welcome it. But I am not so sure about the progressives.
- by Thomas E. Woods, Jr. / LewRockwell.com
The Road to Dictatorship That 56 percent of all Americans "think the federal government's become so large and powerful that it poses an immediate threat to the rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens" isn’t really all that surprising. After all, ever since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the government's "right" to read our e-mails, seize our property, hold us as "enemy combatants," and otherwise trample on the Constitution has been expanding at an exponential pace. What's really shocking, however, is that, according to this CNN-Opinion Research Corporation poll, released on Feb. 28, most of the people who believe this are overwhelmingly … Republicans. That is, they are self-described supporters of the very same party which impaled the Constitution on the sword of the "war on terrorism." According to the poll, "only 37 percent of Democrats" believe this, as opposed to "63 percent of Independents and nearly 7 in 10 Republicans."
Is it just me, or was it only yesterday that the Democratic base was outraged by "Bushitler," and the "Cheney-PNAC" alleged neo-fascists who were taking over the country and driving dissent underground? How quickly they turn!
- by Justin Raimondo / Anitwar.com
CrossTalk: Soviet Amerika On Peter Lavelle's CrossTalk his guests are asked whether the US is following the historic path that led the the collapse of the Soviet Union.
71% Think Iran Already Has the Bomb Allison Kilkenny, regular contributor to the Huffington Post, discusses the CNN poll that found a large majority of Americans believe Iran has nuclear weapons, not-so-covert US actions in Iran that make diplomacy impossible, Republicans who are unwilling to admit the cause and effect between US empire and terrorism and the Democrats who hypocritically defend Obama over the same policies they excoriated Bush for.
Read the IAEA Reports on Iran For almost seven years, the IAEA has been issuing reports roughly every quarter on the findings, issues, and open items from its inspections of Iran's nuclear activities. Three basic facts can be found in its reports. First, all of Iran's nuclear material has been and remains under IAEA "containment and surveillance." Second, Iran does not have nuclear weapons or the means to make them. Third, there is no definitive evidence that Iran in fact has or ever had a nuclear weapons program. For as long as the IAEA has been issuing its reports, however, the major American media have been doing their utmost to twist, torque, and torture them into a nightmarish revelation of ghoulish mullahs feverishly building a doomsday machine as they plan to create a nuclear empire, wipe Israel from the face of the map, and conquer the world.
A couple of years ago I suggested that everyone should read the IAEA reports because an educated public might help avert another unnecessary war based on lies. That, however, probably wasn't inspiring enough. So let me suggest this: If you read the reports and then read the newspaper accounts of them, you can experience firsthand that galvanic shot of astonishment from discovering just how bad – how shamelessly bad – the American media has become.
- by Peter Casey / Antiwar.com
An Appeal to Anti-war Organizations & Activists to Oppose the Increasing Threats Against Iran Around the world, anti-war activists are preparing for major protests this spring to oppose the continuing U.S.-led occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. Meanwhile, a storm of developments is dramatically increasing tensions between the United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran. In response, the Campaign Against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran (CASMII) is issuing this appeal to the anti-war movements in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries to raise the demands of "No war, no sanctions, no internal interference in Iran!"
Iran is a country that hasn't attacked a neighbor in more than 200 years. Even when Saddam Hussein invaded Iran after the 1979 Revolution and, with support from the West, used chemical weapons against both civilians and combatants, the Islamic Republic did not retaliate in kind. And yet the U.S. government claims that Iran represents a serious threat to the Middle East region and the entire world. Without a shred of evidence, the U.S. charges that Iran's program to develop nuclear power for peaceful energy purposes is just a cover to develop nuclear weapons. Never mentioned is the fact that, as a signatory to the U.N.'s Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Iran's right to develop nuclear energy is enshrined in international law.
- by CampaignIran.org
Rachel Corrie Gets Her Day in Court On March 10, in the Israeli city of Haifa, American peace activist Rachel Corrie will get her day in court. Rachel's parents, Cindy and Craig Corrie, are bringing suit against the Israeli defence ministry for Rachel's killing by an Israeli military bulldozer in Gaza in March 2003.
Four key American and British witnesses who were present at the scene - members of the International Solidarity Movement - will be allowed into Israel to testify, despite having been barred previously by the Israeli authorities from entering the country. This reversal by the Israeli authorities is apparently due to U.S. government pressure, the Guardian reports. (Three cheers for any U.S. officials who contributed to this pressure. What else could you make the Israeli government do?)
A Palestinian doctor from Gaza who treated Corrie after she was injured has not been given permission by the Israeli authorities to leave Gaza to attend. (This would seem to be important testimony concerning the nature of Rachel's injuries - did U.S. officials exert pressure for his appearance?)
This case isn't just about accountability for Rachel's death. It's a test case for the power of the rule of law in Israel, when the rule of law comes into conflict with the policies of military occupation.
- by Robert Naiman / Just Foreign Policy
Washington Times Covers 9/11 Controversy A lingering technical question about the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks still haunts some, and it has political implications: How did 200,000 tons of steel disintegrate and drop in 11 seconds? A thousand architects and engineers want to know, and are calling on Congress to order a new investigation into the destruction of the Twin Towers and Building 7 at the World Trade Center. "In order to bring down this kind of mass in such a short period of time, the material must have been artificially, exploded outwards," says Richard Gage, a San Francisco architect and founder of the nonprofit Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth. Mr. Gage, who is a member of the American Institute of Architects, managed to persuade more than 1,000 of his peers to sign a new petition requesting a formal inquiry. "The official Federal Emergency Management [Agency] and National Institute of Standards and Technology reports provide insufficient, contradictory and fraudulent accounts of the circumstances of the towers' destruction. We are therefore calling for a grand jury investigation of NIST officials," Mr. Gage adds. –Washington Times
Dominant Social Theme: Something we, the mainstream media, need to mention at least in passing ...
Free-Market Analysis: We have no idea what happened on 9/11. But since 9/11 Commission members have reportedly disavowed the full government's story - and one has written a book claiming the commission was serially lied to by the Bush administration, the FBI, CIA, etc. - we have to conclude that there are elements of the official story that are not entirely accurate. We would think that the US government would want to get to the bottom of such a serious matter, in some way or other.
Now the Washington Times, a mainstream, beltway newspaper, is seemingly opening up the issue again. There was no need to cover yet another "trufers" story and yet the Times has done so - to the astonishment of the alternative blogosphere. We think, not to make a pun, that this is in fact a sign of the times. The pressure to understand what really happened on 9/11 simply won't go away. It is all over the 'Net and is in fact gaining momentum in our opinion.
- by The Daily Bell
Destroying America from Inside the Classroom I have reported many times in the pages of the DeWeese Report about how public school classrooms are being used, not for the teaching of academic knowledge, but for behavior modification to change the student's attitudes, values and beliefs. Barack Obama is now driving to control classroom curriculum based on United Nation's Globalism. Many parents want to deny this is happening. "Not in my child's school," they tell me. If you still don't believe it's happening in EVERY school that takes public money, then read below, open your eyes, and know the truth about what happens to your child in the schools you send them to every day.
- by Tom DeWeese / American Policy Center
History of Public Education Matt talked tonight about public schools and gave a pro-life reason why they need to be done away with. He supported his assertion with quotes from the founders of public education and showed that their intent was less than noble.
We Don't Need No State Education As long as politicians, bureaucrats, and anointed education experts control the money, competition and entrepreneurship will never reach full blossom. Competition, Hayek taught, is a discovery process, so until entrepreneurship can operate without political inhibition, we won't know what we are missing. Providers of educational services -- must they be schools? -- should be accountable not to bureaucrats but to customers -- parents and their children. Yet the various "school choice" plans maintain the State as the ultimate judge.
When education entrepreneurs need worry only about actual and potential customers who are laying out their own money -- and not State functionaries -- the political inhibitions will be gone, or at least will begin to fade.
- by Sheldon Richman / Campaign For Liberty
February 26, 2010 21st Century Breakdown The American dream has turned into a nightmare. Led by the selfish, materialistic, self-absorbed Boomers, the nation has degenerated into an individualistic society of wealth seekers. The country's common good and attitudes of thrift, hard work, and self reliance have been cast aside for the corporate good, immediate material satisfaction, and entitlement attitude. America is no longer the land of opportunity. It is the land of corporate fascism, benefitting the few.
"The American Dream is that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement. It is a difficult dream for the European upper classes to interpret adequately, and too many of us ourselves have grown weary and mistrustful of it. It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position." -- Historian and writer James Truslow Adams in his 1931 book Epic of America.
This version of the American dream has been slowly fading away for decades. Those with ability who have earned a better life through their hard work, superior intelligence and integrity should attain a higher spot in the social order. Instead, government rewards those Americans who have taken unwarranted risks, made corrupt choices, and willingly chose a path of excessive debt to scale the social order. The game is stacked in favor of the elite, while middle class wages have stagnated for the last 40 years. Government bureaucracy strangles the entrepreneurial spirit of the people, while empowering those who want to control our every action.
- by James Quinn / The Burning Platform
Ron Paul - MSNBC Dylan Ratigan 02/23/10 On Tuesday, February 23, Ron Paul was interviewed on "The Dylan Ratigan Show" concerning his CPAC straw poll win, the future of the GOP, and the growth of government.
CPAC: "Conservatism" at the Crossroads Launched in 1973 by the American Conservative Union and Young Americans for Freedom, CPAC has been the annual "premiere" gathering of conservatives, featuring future, current, or past Presidents of the United States, Governors, Members of Congress, authors, academics, commentators, and celebrities. While ostensibly nonpartisan, CPAC has been essentially a Republican event, with a sprinkling of Libertarians and exiled anti-communist Democrats. That changed this year, however, owing largely to the repudiation of the GOP in the 2008 elections and the repudiation by rank-and-file conservatives of the Big Government Republican Party exemplified by George W. Bush and most of the GOP leaders in Congress. This year's conference, the largest ever, was particularly notable for the large presence of activists from Congressman Ron Paul's Campaign for Liberty, an outgrowth of his energetic and highly visible 2008 presidential campaign in the Republican primaries. In addition, independent Tea Party activists, many of whom also were activated by the Ron Paul campaign, comprised a significant contingent of the more than 10,000 attendees at the CPAC confab.
The Bush-Cheney wing of the Republican Party and the neoconservative scribblers at National Review who favor a borrow-borrow/spend-spend domestic policy only slightly less lavish than the Democrats and a foreign policy of "perpetual war for perpetual peace" have targeted both the Ron Paul supporters and Tea Party activists for ridicule and exclusion. But the CPAC organizers wisely decided that in the interest of "big tent conservatism" they should not bow to the Republican establishment's wish to bar those "unruly" elements that condemn and oppose GOP policies that are incompatible with the genuine conservative philosophy of our nation's Founders. Those policies include most especially the Republican Party's conversion on matters such as foreign interventionism, binge spending, corporate bailouts, expansion of federal Leviathan and federal police authority, and evisceration of the Bill of Rights.
- by William F. Jasper / The New American
Ron Paul Never Thunders, But He's a Lightning Rod Anyway The talking heads of America are outraged at Ron Paul once again. They dismissed him in 2007, dissed him in 2008 and ignored him in 2009. And now he's got the nerve to win the presidential straw poll at the Conservative Political Action Conference held in Washington last weekend.
The winner of that poll is often considered the consensus leader in the race for the next GOP presidential nomination. When Mitt Romney won it last time around, he was seen as something of a sure thing in an otherwise weak field.
Well the 2012 field is even weaker than last time around. But across the spectrum, the pundits agree that the Texas congressman has no business being in it. Newsweek proclaimed Paul "probably won't run again for president in 2012 and almost certainly wouldn't win the Republican nomination if he did." The Fox News crowd repeated the "Paul is dead" mantra as if the congressman were a Beatle. As for Glenn Beck, who spoke at CPAC, he termed the winner of 31 percent of the audience's votes "a crazy, kooky guy."
Quite an achievement for a man who may be the single most unexciting speaker in American politics today. I mean that as high praise. The U.S. Constitution is a dry, unemotional document. And Paul, as its leading proponent in Congress, is a dry, unemotional guy.
So why do his opponents get worked up into such a fervor?
I've been mystified by that since early in 2007, when I first interviewed him. Even though Paul had announced for the Republican nomination for president, I didn't have to go through a press secretary to contact him. I just asked around and got his home number. We had a pleasant chat about the Constitution.
- by Paul Mulshine / The Star Ledger
What is a Right? In the continually harsh public discourse over the President’s proposals for federally-managed healthcare, the Big Government progressives in both the Democratic and the Republican parties have been trying to trick us. These folks, who really want the government to care for us from cradle to grave, have been promoting the idea that health care is a right.
In promoting that false premise, they have succeeded in moving the debate from WHETHER the feds should micro-manage health care to HOW the feds should micro-manage health care. This is a false premise, and we should reject it. Health care is not a right; it is a good, like food, like shelter, and like clothing.
- by Andrew Napolitano / Tenth Amendment Center
Is America Becoming A Police State? Instead of demanding that government take care of us, we should be demanding that government get out of our wallets and off our backs, and let us live free, as our Creator intended we live! But how can we do that when we constantly clamor for more and more government handouts and benefits? By demanding welfare checks, food stamps, government-assisted housing and medicine, etc., Americans are putting the shackles around their own throats. Even churches and religious institutions are gorging themselves at the government teat. America doesn't need to worry about terrorist attacks from Baghdad or Tehran as much as we should worry about the terrorism from Big Brother--brought about with our own approbation--right here at home.
- by Chuck Baldwin / NewsWithViews
You Are Not Free Will Grigg, author of Liberty in Eclipse, discusses the Second Amendment's waning influence in the state of Massachusetts, the submit-to-authority indoctrination of children in public schools, the militaristic rituals that intrude on nearly all American social events, how the manufactured partisan divide functions as a political distraction and the Republican Party's hijacking of the Tea Party movement.
Anti-Gold Conservatives Within the American conservative movement, opponents of the gold standard -- any form of gold standard -- have always dominated the leadership. Newcomers may be unaware of this. The average political conservative today is suspicious of the welfare state. He opposes price inflation. He wants "sound money." But his knowledge of money and banking is limited. Until Ron Paul's 2007-8 run for President, the average conservative voter had heard little about the Federal Reserve System.
- by Gary North / LewRockwell.com
Government Stimulus, One Year Later Last week marked the one year anniversary of the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, or the stimulus bill, passing into law. While the debate over its success has been focused on whether or not it is stimulating the economy and on various questionable uses of funds, in my estimation this legislation is accomplishing exactly what it was intended to accomplish - grow the government. Those of us concerned about the ever increasing level of government debt gasped at the astonishing $787 billion cost estimates for this bill. True to form it has actually cost 10 percent more at $862 billion.
- by Ron Paul / Texas Straight Talk
Opening Statement of Ron Paul at Humphrey Hawkins Hearing 2/24/10 Fed Chairman Bernanke is before the Financial Services Committee to testify on monetary policy and the state of the economy.
Congressman Paul Questions Bernanke 2/24/10 at the Humphrey Hawkins Hearing on agreements with foreign central banks and Greece, specifically.
Statement for the Record Madame Speaker, I would like to enter into the record the following letter from Professor Robert D. Auerbach, a professor at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas. This letter provides additional information regarding remarks I made at yesterday's Financial Services Committee Humphrey-Hawkins hearing, remarks which Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke categorized as "bizarre." : "I thank Congressman Ron Paul for bringing to the public's attention the Federal Reserve coverup of the source of the Watergate burglars' source of funding and the defective audit by the Federal Reserve of the bank that transferred $5.5 billion from the U.S. government to Saddam Hussein in the 1980s. Congressman Paul directed these comments to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke at the House Financial Services Hearing February 24, 2010. I question Chairman Bernanke's dismissive response. The evidence Congressman Ron Paul mentioned is well documented in my recent book, Deception and Abuse at the Fed (University of Texas Press: 2008). The head of the Federal Reserve bureaucracy should become familiar with its dismal practices."
- by Statement of Congressman Ron Paul, Before the US House of Representatives
Obama's Phony Populism President Obama likes to portray himself as a man of the people. But a look behind the veil shows this to be a deception. Take the financial regulatory overhaul brewing in Washington.
I know what you’re thinking: What could better illustrate Obama's bona fides as a champion of the people? He wants to regulate the banking industry after the recent debacle and is being fought by the banks and the Republicans. Doesn't this clearly demonstrate his pro-people agenda?
A closer looks reveals the real story to be something quite different. First, there has never been an unregulated banking industry in the United States. You can look it up. And since 1914 we've had a central bank, the Fed, whose regulatory powers have only increased over the decades. Several other agencies also regulate the banks. There are regulators at the state level too.
But to focus only on regulation is to miss a big part of the story. In truth what we have had is a banking cartel, a partnership of government (state or national) and nominally private financial institutions. This partnership has two broad aspects that function as a quid pro quo: regulation and protection from free competition, that is, special privilege. The two sides haven't always agreed on the exact proportions of the two elements, and the bankers have even disagreed among themselves. But lack of unanimity about details should not be mistaken for lack of agreement about the fundamental nature of the system. It is a government-banking alliance. Neither side would have it any other way.
- by Sheldon Richman / Future of Freedom Foundation
Liquidating the Empire In their Mount Vernon declaration of principles, conservatives called the Constitution their guiding star. But did not the author of that constitution, James Madison, warn us that wars are the death of republics?
Under Bush II, conservatives, spurning the wisdom of their fathers, let themselves be seduced, neo-conned into enlisting in a Wilsonian crusade that had as its declared utopian goal "ending tyranny in our world."
How could conservatives whose defining virtue is prudence and who pride themselves on following the lamp of experience have been taken into camp by the hustlers and hucksters of empire?
Yet, now that Barack Obama has embraced neo-socialism, Republicans are about to be given a second chance. And just as Rahm Emanuel said liberal Democrats should not let a financial crisis go to waste, but exploit it to ram through their agenda, the right should use the opportunity of the fiscal crisis to take an axe to the warfare state.
Ron Paul's victory at CPAC may be a sign the prodigal sons of the right are casting off the heresy of neoconservatism and coming home to first principles.
- by Patrick J. Buchanan / The American Conservative
Congress Extends Patriot Act, No New Protections Legislation to extend expiring provisions of the anti-terror USA Patriot Act won final congressional approval on Thursday, with Democrats unable to add additional civil liberties protections. On vote of 315-97, the House of Representatives approved the bill, a day after it cleared the Senate. It now heads to President Barack Obama to sign into law. The Obama administration wanted to extend the measure because of provisions it says are important in tracking suspected terrorists, including roving wiretaps to track multiple communications devices. But some lawmakers wanted additional privacy measures to protect against abuses. With the Patriot Act provisions set to expire on Sunday, lawmakers agreed to extend them for a year, and effectively put off a showdown on efforts to bolster safeguards
- by Reuters
A Presidential 'Right' to Commit Mass Murder No reasonably well-informed person should be surprised to learn that the doctrine of unaccountable presidential power set out during the Bush administration includes the supposed authority to engage in undisguised mass murder. John C. Yoo, who crafted the Bush administration's legal defense of those supposed powers, committed to writing the idea that a president and his agents could engage in torture, despite the fact that it is banned by both federal law and the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. In a public debate Yoo endorsed the idea that a president could order the sexual torture of a suspected terrorist's child in order to compel the parent to cooperate with interrogators.
- by Will Grigg / Liberty Minute
Ron Paul Floor Statement on Assassinations 2/24/10 Congressman Paul speaks on the floor about assassinations of Americans by their own government
The Terror-Industrial Complex The phrase "war on terror" has been used to justify trillions of dollars in spending, hundreds of thousands of new government positions, and thousands of new government contracts. At the same time, the "war on terror" has produced very little in terms of new technology or enhanced security, has vastly increased the degree of national centralization, and has created many new permanent trees and branches in the gnarled world of federal and state institutions.
- by Karen Kwiatkowski / LewRockwell.com
The War on Terror Is Anti-Conservative Benjamin Franklin once observed that those who would trade their liberties for security will wind up losing both. James Madison stated that no nation can preserve freedom in the midst of perpetual warfare. Few can question that America's Founding Fathers epitomize true conservatism. There is something seriously wrong in America today precisely because the elites from both political parties have forgotten about Franklin and Madison and ignored their wise counsel.
No one should doubt that ill-conceived security measures and the greatly exaggerated fear of terrorism have driven much of both foreign and domestic policy since 9/11 -- it was undeniably a horrific experience for this nation, but it did not threaten the survival of the American Republic. Its perpetrators and their heirs do not do so today. Only we Americans can do that and we are doing so by overreacting to the danger and compromising our own liberties.
- by Philip Giraldi / Campaign For Liberty
Why Real Conservatives Are Against the War on Terrorism Is America's current "War on Terror" essential to keeping our nation safe? Or is it yet another vehicle for the federal government to increase its power over our lives and take away our liberties? Is the "War on Terror" actually weakening our national defense and increasing opposition overseas? The panel, co-sponsored by The Future of Freedom Foundation, Ladies of Liberty Alliance and Campaign for Liberty, included:
# Karen Kwiatkowski — retired U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel
# Jacob Hornberger — founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation
# Philip M. Giraldi — former CIA counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer, current Francis Walsingham Fellow at The American Conservative Defense Alliance
# Bruce Fein — former associate deputy attorney general in the Reagan administration
- by Future of Freedom Foundation
More Terrorist Blowback from U.S. Foreign Policy Immediately after 9/11, Bush administration officials declared the motivation of the terrorists: that the terrorists hated America for its "freedom and values."
In other words, the 9/11 attacks, according to President Bush, Vice-President Cheney, and other U.S. officials, had absolutely nothing to do with the boiling rage in the Middle East over U.S. foreign policy.
- by Jacob G. Hornberger / Future of Freedom Foundation
What's In a Name? The public has become so accustomed to extrajudicial killings and kidnappings by the United States and Israel that such activities most often receive little media coverage and are hardly noticed. The recent massive assassination operation carried out by Israel's Mossad in Dubai has been an exception, however. It has attracted considerable media attention in Europe though relatively little in the United States, possibly because any American outcry would be the pot calling the kettle black. Europeans have mostly been outraged by the Israeli cloning of genuine European passports to carry out their dirty work, less so by the killing itself.
- by Philip Giraldi / Antiwar.com
Why Neocons Hate Muslims While there has been much discussion over why Muslims hate Americans, much less attention has been given to why neocons hate Muslims. While it might be true that some neocons hate Muslims for their religious and cultural values, I think there is a better explanation for their hatred. I think the real reason that neocons want to kill Muslims so badly is that people in the Middle East, who are predominately Muslim, have refused to accept the domination of the U.S. Empire, especially in the aftermath of the Cold War, when the U.S. became the world's sole remaining empire. That refusal has earned them the everlasting enmity of American neocons.
- by Jacob G. Hornberger / Future of Freedom Foundation
9/11 Truth Search: Planes Didn't Take Twin Towers Down On 9/11, the world watched as two airplanes crashed into the twin towers of the world trade center, both of which collapsed shortly after. This much we know for sure, but for some, the cause of the collapse is still not so clear. Michael T Donly is a part of a group that says the two planes that hit the WTC twin towers could not have destroyed them.
The Road to Armageddon The U.S. has already encircled Iran with military bases. The U.S. government intends to neutralize China by seizing control over the Middle East and cutting China off from oil.
This plan assumes that Russia and China, nuclear armed states, will be intimidated by U.S. anti-missile defenses and acquiesce to U.S. hegemony and that China will lack oil for its industries and military.
The U.S. government is delusional. Russian military and political leaders have responded to the obvious threat by declaring NATO a direct threat to the security of Russia and by announcing a change in Russian war doctrine to the pre-emptive launch of nuclear weapons. The Chinese are too confident to be bullied by a washed up American "superpower."
The morons in Washington are pushing the envelope of nuclear war. The insane drive for American hegemony threatens life on earth. The American people, by accepting the lies and deceptions of "their" government, are facilitating this outcome.
- by Paul Craig Roberts / VDare.com
Paul Craig Roberts on the Alex Jone Show 2/22/10 - Part 2 - Part 3 Alex welcomes back to the show Paul Craig Roberts, economist and a nationally syndicated columnist who served as an Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan Administration earning fame as the "Father of Reaganomics." He is a former editor and columnist for the Wall Street Journal, Business Week, and Scripps Howard News Service. Roberts is the author of The Tyranny of Good Intentions: How Prosecutors and Bureaucrats Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice, and How the Economy Was Lost: The War of the Worlds.
Conquest and Censorship After the Battle of Hastings in 1066, William the Conqueror's army buried its fallen comrades, but left the corpses of the English defenders to rot in the fields where they lay. Such is the brutal nature of war: the victor inflicts all manner of suffering and humiliation on the vanquished. What the United States is doing in Iraq and Afghanistan is only marginally different. William the Conqueror made no pretense about his brutal subjugation of the English. They hated him and resisted his occupation for twenty years, during which time he took all their property and gave it to the Norman upper class. Over 300,000 English people were murdered and starved (one fifth of the population) and some 300,000 French and Normans were planted in England in positions of authority.
- by Douglas Valentine / LewRockwell.com
America's First Suicide Bomber Joseph Stack, frustrated American, flew his airplane into an Austin, Texas, office building. He was one of the 79 percent of Americans who have given up on "their" government.
The latest Rasmussen Poll indicates that the vast majority of Americans are convinced that "their" government is totally unresponsive to them, their concerns, and their needs. Rasmussen found that only 21 percent of the American population agrees that the U.S. government has the consent of the governed, and that 21 percent is comprised of the political class itself and liberals. Rasmussen concludes that the gap between the American population and the politicians who rule them "may be as big today as the gap between the colonies and England during the 18th century."
Indications are that Joseph Stack was sane. Like Palestinians faced with Israeli jet fighters, helicopter gunships, tanks, missiles and poison gas, Stack realized that he was powerless. A suicide attack was the only weapon left to him.
Stack targeted the IRS, the federal agency that had gratuitously ruined him. He flew his airplane into an office building occupied by 200 members of the IRS. This deliberate plan and the written explanation he left behind segregate him from deranged people who randomly shoot up a Post Office or university campus.
The government and its propaganda ministry do not want to call Stack a terrorist. "Terrorist" is a term the government reserves for Muslims who do not like what Israel does to Palestinians and the U.S. government does to Muslim countries.
But Stack experienced the same frustrations and emotions as Muslims who can't take it any longer and strap on a suicide vest.
- by Paul Craig Roberts / VDare.com
'Liberal Protestant Churches Pose Growing Threat to Israel' Israel is facing a threat from theologians and activists in prominent Protestant churches throughout the world, in addition to the threats posed by "lawfare" and the Goldstone Report, Rabbi Abraham Cooper, the associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, charged on Tuesday.
Cooper was speaking at a plenary session of the seventh annual Jerusalem Conference in the capital.
"Theologians and activists in some prominent Protestant churches are seeking to destroy Israel from Above," Cooper warned. "Their activities threaten to turn traditional friends into enemies and erode support for Israel in the United States.... They cast Israel as a theological mistake, conceived in the sin of the last gasp of Western colonialism."
According to Cooper, the center of the Protestant theological war against Israel is the Geneva-based World Council of Churches, an umbrella organization of liberal church bodies, boasting a worldwide following of 349 churches and 580,000 members.
- by Dan Izenberg / The Jerusalem Post
Dispensationalists Want Lots of Jews Wiped Out Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu recently proclaimed the fulfillment of the prophecy in Ezekiel 37. Dispensationalist Jan Markell is excited that an authoritative Israelite is on the Bible prophecy bandwagon. What dispensationalists are not telling Israelites is that they believe two-thirds of them are potentially about to be wiped out! Gary DeMar reports on this and reflects on the errors of interpretations in Old Testament Scriptures that dispensationalists make.
Life In The Gaza Strip Gulag This is the fourth in this series, "Inside The Gaza Strip" in the occupied territories called Palestine. It is about the culture, both Christian and Muslim.
Gaza is, in every sense, a jail. The renowned Russian reformer, Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, might have called it a gulag of political prisoners. Its entire population is captive. The Israeli Defense Force can and does cork this jug at will. It pulled that plug for just a moment and allowed me to pass because I have an American passport, and it jammed the cork backs in behind me to let no one else pass.
Where but in a prison do you find prisoners? Consider it, a society has been completely deprived of its right to come and go, and yet it has survived. Not only has Palestine survived for 52 years, but also much of what goes on among its people is not only normal, but healthy. In most respects, I found the lives of the captives more healthy and moral than the lives of the captors.
My hosts, Americans citizens who are engaged in relief work and education in Gaza, shared their several years of experiences living with the Palestinians. I am not free to give their names, but I will share their thoughts.
- by Charles E. Carlson / We Hold These Truths
Why Are Young Americans Less Committed to Faith? | A recent report by the Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion and Public Life seems to validate concerns among Christian leaders that younger generations of Americans are losing the spiritual moorings that have helped keep their nation strong from its founding.
Analyzing the extent to which the religious views of America's "millennials" - adults between the ages of 18 and 29 - differ from those of adults over 30, the Pew Forum's "Religion Among the Millennials” report found that they are in general less affiliated with a particular religious faith than their over-30 counterparts, attend religious services less often, and say that religion is less important to them.
And while the beliefs of young adults about the existence of heaven, hell, and miracles, as well as their attitudes on prayer, are similar to those held by older adults, the report also found that they tend to be more tolerant of behaviors that previous generations found morally wrong, and have been more conditioned to accept an expanded role of government in their lives.
- by Dave Bohon / The New American
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