Libertarian communicator Ron Paul strongly criticized the United States government’s war on drugs in a Saturday interview with host Michael Smerconish at CNN. The interview concerned the Thursday memorandum from US Attorney General Jeff Sessions that rescinded some prior US Department of Justice memoranda providing guidance for US prosecutors to refrain from certain prosecutions of individuals complying with liberalized state marijuana laws. read on...
Fifty-seven years ago this month President Dwight D. Eisenhower presented this warning in his farewell address: “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.” That warning has largely fallen on deaf ears.
The United States government has in the decades since been participating, both directly and via third parties, in overt and covert military actions across the world, with very little of the violence even arguably justified as necessary to defend America. Yet, no matter the lack of defensive justification, companies and individuals in the military-industrial complex profit from the high military spending and the destruction wrought abroad. read on...
Obama declared that the Afghanistan War was over, but Trump has renewed it. For the past 4 years, Trump made all sorts of strong unambiguous statements against being in this war. He favored hitting the exits and getting out of it. He’s now changed his mind, which seems to be a president’s typical habit concerning war-making. He’s sending many thousands more American soldiers to Afghanistan and into this 16-year old war.
Trump has embraced the concept of a “war on terror.” He’s working from that concept. The results will be as bad as they already have been in the first 16 years of this “war.” read on...
The US-led coalition has issued yet another report on the civilian death toll in their airstrikes against Iraq and Syria since 2014, and continues to dismiss the vast, vast majority of the civilian deaths as “not credible.”
The promotion of the alleged Russian election hacking in certain media may have grown from the successful attempts of U.S. intelligence services to limit the publication of the NSA files obtained by Edward Snowden.
In May 2013 Edward Snowden fled to Hong Kong and handed internal documents from the National Security Agency (NSA) to four journalists, Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras, and Ewen MacAskill of the Guardian and separately to Barton Gellman who worked for theWashington Post. Some of those documents were published by Glenn Greenwald in theGuardian, others by Barton Gellman in the Washington Post. Several other international news site published additional material though the mass of NSA papers that Snowden allegedly acquired never saw public daylight.
In July 2013 the Guardian was forced by the British government to destroy its copy of the Snowden archive. read on...
The House Republican leadership has been forced to abandon plans to reauthorize Section 702 FISA, which is soon to expire and has been used by the NSA for wholesale surveillance against the American public, because many are demanding time for debate.
Though the Section 702 reauthorization was long believed to rest on inserting something that gave the appearance of “reform” without angering the leadership by amounting to any actual reform, they appear to have been unable to thread that needle, and now it is expected that a short-term extension will be rushed through the delay expiration until January. read on...
Election after election people in the media throw out spurious assertions that Libertarian Party candidates cause Republicans to lose. So it was little surprise to come across an article published last week with the title “Relieved by Roy Moore’s defeat? Thank a Libertarian.” What was surprising was that this article was published at the website of the United States Libertarian Party.
In the article credited as written by party staff, Libertarian National Committee Chairman Nicholas Sarwark is quoted as saying the following in regard to the defeat of Republican nominee Roy Moore by Democratic nominee Doug Jones in the United States Senate special election last week in Alabama: “If you’re happy that Roy Moore was not elected to the Senate, thank write-in candidates like Libertarian Ron Bishop.” read on...
Some people are expressing concern that notoriously anti-marijuana United States Attorney General Jeff Sessions will go on a marijuana prohibition enforcement rampage if a US law restraint on Department of Justice spending for prosecuting individuals complying with state medical marijuana laws lapses. But, over at Reason, Jacob Sullum presents four reasons why the lapsing of the restraint will likely lead to little or no change in regard to US government enforcement of marijuana laws in states that have legalized medical or recreational marijuana.Read Sullum’s Monday article here. read on...
A new episode of Five Minutes Five Issues is out. You can listen to it, and read a transcript, below. You can also find previous episodes of the show at Stitcher, iTunes, YouTube, and SoundCloud. read on...
Soon after word came out Monday that someone had detonated a bomb in a pedestrian tunnel of the New York City subway system, people were saying the alleged bomber should not be afforded respect for his constitutional rights and should be shipped off to the United States military’s Guantanamo prison in Cuba. Fox News Senior Judicial Analyst Andrew Napolitano, however, argues in a new video commentary that it is important that the US government respect alleged bomber Akayed Ullah’s rights guaranteed under the US Constitution — including rights to be represented by a lawyer and to have a jury trial. read on...
