This election season is presenting unprecedented challenges to the peace and prosperity coalition that was born in opposition to the traditional Left/Right matrix. Young people have been strongly attracted to Ron Paul's message of keeping the government out of their private lives and out of the lives of people living overseas. It seems that presidential candidates in both major parties are appealing to some who continue to value non-intervention and civil liberties, yet the candidates' messages on these central issues are mixed at best. What are the implications for this shift and should we be worried that our message is being subsumed by the great populist wave currently being surfed by both Trump and Sanders? Tune in to today's Liberty Report... read on...
Innocent until proven guilty? Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination? Hah! Not if you forget your passwords, in Post-Constitutional America.
Former Philadelphia Police Sergeant Francis Rawls, above, has spent the past seven months in solitary confinement without conviction because passwords he entered for investigators failed to decrypt his hard drives, seized in connection with a child porn investigation. Rawls says he’s forgotten the correct passwords and so can’t decrypt the drives and provide the cops with evidence that he possessed child porn. read on...
In 1980 President Carter issued an order requiring males between 18 and 25 to register with Selective Service should a military draft become necessary. It was a response to the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. At the time women were not eligible for the draft because they were not eligible for combat roles. Much has changed in the intervening 36 years, and women are now eligible for military combat. In the name of "equality," some have argued that it is only fair for women to be forced to register for the draft as well. Unfortunately those who hold such a position are missing the main point: equality in slavery is nothing to cheer. Being forced by the government to fight and possibly die for its foreign policy goals is an idea incompatible with a free society. We do not owe the government a part of our lives to repay the "freedom" they give us, as our freedom is not a gift granted by government. What should young people facing the obligation of registering for a draft they do not believe in? We cover this and much more in today's Liberty Report... read on...
Get ready for the new cold war, which will no doubt turn hot if Hillary Clinton gets into the White House: NATO has just announced it is “considering” the addition of 4,000 more troops to be stationed in Poland and the Baltic states, i.e. right on Russia’s western border. The Washington Post helpfully informs us that this is being done “to deter future Russian aggression” – as if there’s any real possibility that Putin will order the Russian army to take Warsaw or march on Estonia.
What this is is another NATO provocation aimed at showing Putin who’s really in charge in the former Soviet Union’s sphere of influence. They’re hoping the Russian leader will respond in kind. But he’s too smart for that: instead, Putin will retaliate in a different theater, perhaps in Syria or Armenia, where the fight with Azerbaijan in Nagorno-Karabakh is in full swing.
This latest move will bring the number of NATO troops staring at the Russkies across their western border to nearly 10,000, if we take into account the “Very High Readiness Joint Task Force” previously mobilized and the US troops already in Ukraine. read on...
Do you remember what US national-security state officials were saying when millions of Americans were demanding that the US government withdraw its troops from Vietnam and bring them home?
They were saying that “national security” was at stake — i.e., the very survival of the United States. If the US government withdrew from Vietnam, they said, the dominoes would start falling to the communists, first in Southeast Asia and ultimately all over the world, with the United States being the final big domino. Vietnam was our line of defense against the entire world going red.
It was all false. As I point in my new ebook The CIA, Terrorism, and the Cold War: The Evil of the National Security State(which just hit #5 in Amazon’s top 100 bestselling ebooks in Political Freedom), in actuality it didn’t make a whit of difference whether Vietnam and other countries in the world went red, at least not insofar as the United States was concerned. That is, the existence of the United States was never threatened by the fact that other countries had communist regimes. read on...
Just ten years after America was shocked at the treatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and just a year and a half after the Senate torture report, a recent poll suggests that three-fourths of the population would support torture of terrorism suspects. Have we so quickly forgotten the fallout from the CIA's shameful practices, where innocents were tortured for information they did not possess? Have we forgotten that torture is a moral outrage, is itself a form of terrorism, and does not even work? Have we forgotten that the "ticking time bomb" scenario is a Hollywood fiction, not a reality? Or is the media manipulating the population into supporting Washington's interventionist foreign policy with carefully-worded polls designed to show more support for torture than really exists. Tune in to today's Liberty Report... read on...
When Vice President Joseph Biden traveled to Iraq a few days ago, he did it, as always, under a shroud of secrecy. The mainstream press was asked in advance to keep the trip secret and dutifully complied. Biden declined to spend the night in Iraq, staying only 10 hours before whisking away to Italy, where presumably he slept safe and sound.
Why all the secrecy? Why didn’t Biden stay in Baghdad a few days, walk the streets, do a little shopping, visit with the people, and tour the country? After all, isn’t this the country that the US government invaded and regime-changed under the military rubric “Operation Iraqi Freedom”? Isn’t this the country that the US military and the CIA occupied for more than 10 years, killing people with impunity and destroying homes, buildings, and infrastructure in the process, all with the aim of producing a showcase for interventionism to present to the world?
Oh, let’s not forget the regime they installed. After all, lest we forget, this was, in fact, a regime-change operation, one devoted to removing Saddam Hussein from power (who had been a partner and ally of the US government during the 1980s) and installing and establishing a government that would be, well, more pro-USA. and, therefore, more “free.” read on...
Over the weekend a militia supporting Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr breached the "Green Zone" protecting the Iraqi government and foreign embassies in Baghdad. They are protesting ongoing corruption among Iraq's US-backed leaders. Lawmakers fled and a state of emergency was declared. Is this the beginning of the end for post-"liberation" Iraq? Join the Ron Paul Liberty Report in its 300th episode to look at Iraq's slow-motion collapse... read on...
I have previously written about the peculiar position of being counsel for Hillary Clinton when your client, her advisers, and allies mock the massive federal investigation that continues into her reckless use of an unsecured personal server for her official communications as Secretary of State. As counsel you usually strive to show investigators that your client understands the gravity of such violations and accepts responsibility for serious mistakes of judgment or action on her part. The Clintons however have been yielding to a political rather than a legal narrative in mocking the investigation — something that truly must mystify those FBI agents working the case. In the latest such example, former president Bill Clinton used a speech in Kokomo, Indiana to dismiss the FBI investigation is nothing more than “a game.” read on...
Last week the House Armed Services Committee approved an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act requiring women to register with Selective Service. This means that if Congress ever brings back the draft, women will be forcibly sent to war.
The amendment is a response to the Pentagon’s decision to allow women to serve in combat. Supporters of drafting women point out that the ban on women in combat was the reason the Supreme Court upheld a male-only draft. Therefore, they argue, it is only logical to now force women to register for Selective Service. Besides, supporters of extending the draft point out, not all draftees are sent into combat. read on...
