Isilion

Rep. Ron Paul wants President Bush to issue “letters of marque or reprisal” against Osama bin Laden.

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William S. Lind is a smart man.

You cannot win at the strategic level simply by accumulating tactical successes, as our Second-Generation, firepower/attrition-oriented military automatically assumes. The strategic level follows its own logic, and strategic victory requires a sound strategy. When, as is currently the case, we have no strategy, this fact works against us.

We do not now have the power to re-create a state in Iraq, if we ever did. That is due in part to military failure, but it has more to do with a problem of legitimacy. As a foreign, Christian invader and occupier, we cannot create any legitimate institutions in Iraq. Quite the contrary: we have the reverse Midas touch. Any institution we create, or merely approve of and support, loses its legitimacy.

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I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom. My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them. It is not to inaugurate new programs, but to cancel old ones that do violence to the Constitution, or have failed their purpose, or that impose on the people an unwarranted financial burden. I will not attempt to discover whether legislation is ‘needed’ before I have first determined whether it is constitutionally permissible. And if I should be attacked for neglecting my constituents’ ‘interests,’ I shall reply that I was informed that their main interest is liberty, and in that cause I am doing the very best I can. Barry Goldwater, 1960

One thing is clear: The Founding Fathers never intended a nation where citizens pay nearly half of everything they earn to government. Ron Paul, 2001

By the way, when I say cut taxes, I don’t mean fiddle with the code. I mean abolish the income tax and the IRS, and replace them with nothing. Ron Paul, 2002

We need to understand that the more government spends, the more freedom is lost. Instead of simply debating spending levels, we ought to be debating whether the departments, agencies, and programs funded by the budget should exist at all. Ron Paul, 2004

Even today, individual income taxes account for only approximately one-third of federal revenue. Eliminating one-third of the proposed 2007 budget would still leave federal spending at roughly $1.8 trillion – a sum greater than the budget just 6 years ago in 2000! Does anyone seriously believe we could not find ways to cut spending back to 2000 levels? Ron Paul, 2006

maverick conservative Republican ­— and presidential contender — Ron Paul of Texas, will be getting plenty of help from anti-war Democrats on his proposal (HR 2605) to repeal President Bush’s authority to use force in Iraq within six months.

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While Ron Paul visited Spartanburg South Carolina to deliver a one-hour plus speech to potential voters, his supporters were taking a little action of their own.
Video Here

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Stop Dreaming: Ron Paul on Taxes, War and Liberty.

Even today, individual income taxes account for only approximately one-third of federal revenue. Eliminating one-third of the proposed 2007 budget would still leave federal spending at roughly $1.8 trillion – a sum greater than the budget just 6 years ago in 2000! Does anyone seriously believe we could not find ways to cut spending back to 2000 levels?¹

By the way, when I say cut taxes, I don’t mean fiddle with the code. I mean abolish the income tax and the IRS, and replace them with nothing.²

One thing is clear: The Founding Fathers never intended a nation where citizens pay nearly half of everything they earn to government.³

We need to understand that the more government spends, the more freedom is lost. Instead of simply debating spending levels, we ought to be debating whether the departments, agencies, and programs funded by the budget should exist at all.⁴

You know I won’t play the Capitol Hill games with the Capitol Hill gang, denouncing the IRS while giving the Gestapo more of your money. Or figuring out some other federal tax for them to squeeze out of you. I also want to abolish the Federal Reserve… The value of our dollar and the level of our interest rates are not supposed to be manipulated by a few members of the power elite meeting secretly in a marble palace. Without the Federal Reserve, our money could not be inflated at the behest of big government or big banks.⁵

Military force is justified only in self-defense; naked aggression is the province of dictators and rogue states. This is the danger of a new “preemptive first strike” doctrine.⁶

If we can’t or won’t define the enemy, the cost to fight such a war will be endless. How many American troops are we prepared to lose? How much money are we prepared to spend? How many innocent civilians, in our nation and others, are we willing to see killed? How many American civilians will we jeopardize? How much of our civil liberties are we prepared to give up?⁷

I rise to urge the Congress to think twice before thrusting this nation into a war without merit – one fraught with the danger of escalating into something no American will be pleased with.⁸

Failure of government programs prompts more determined efforts, while the loss of liberty is ignored or rationalized away. Whether it’s the war against poverty, drugs, terrorism, or the current Hitler of the day, an appeal to patriotism is used to convince the people that a little sacrifice of liberty, here and there, is a small price to pay. The results, though, are frightening and will soon become even more so.⁹

Brief Overview of Congressman Paul’s Record:¹⁰

He has never voted to raise taxes.
He has never voted for an unbalanced budget.
He has never voted for a federal restriction on gun ownership.
He has never voted to raise congressional pay.
He has never taken a government-paid junket.
He has never voted to increase the power of the executive branch.

He voted against the Patriot Act.
He voted against regulating the Internet.
He voted against the Iraq war.

He does not participate in the lucrative congressional pension program.
He returns a portion of his annual congressional office budget to the U.S. treasury every year.

Congressman Paul introduces numerous pieces of substantive legislation each year, probably more than any single member of Congress.

1. Cough Up by Ron Paul, April 11, 2006

2. Congressman Ron Paul’s TV Gaffe

3. Statement For We The People Press Conference, July 17, 2001

4. Oppose the Spendthrift 2005 Federal Budget Resolution, March 25, 2004

5. Congressman Ron Paul’s TV Gaffe

6. Arguments Against a War on Iraq, September 4, 2002

7. Ron Paul speech in the House of Representatives, September 25, 2001

8. Arguments Against a War on Iraq, September 4, 2002

9. Sorry, Mr. Franklin, “We’re All Democrats Now”, January 29, 2003

10. About Ron Paul

Citing overwhelming support from his own party’s members and lackluster response to Libertarian presidential campaigns, Steve Kubby today endorsed US Representative Ron Paul’s campaign for the Republican Party’s 2008 presidential nomination. Kubby, a candidate in his own party’s presidential contest, made the endorsement in an interview from his home in Mendocino County, California.

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It’s all just bots and spammers.

Sources
Federal Election Commission
The Truth @ The Spin Factor

Disclaimer: the FEC data are confusing. If I added up anything wrong let me know. I will fix it.

UPDATE:

Seems others have done a bit more work than I did. Hats off to Phreadom and to The Spin Factor.

Until about six or eight months ago I was of the school of thought that voting–except maybe on local issues–was a complete waste of time. The only thing at issue in national and most state wide elections is who gets the reigns of an entrenched, centralized, control-oriented bureaucracy backed up by force of arms. There is never any debate about whether such a freedom killing, spirit crushing system should even exist.

Now, though, I hear this guy who says “Government has a role but it is very limited: protection of individual liberty. What I’d like to be is a president who doesn’t even have the goal of running your life, running the economy or running the world.”

I honestly believe that ordinary working and middle class people–in short, most everybody–will respond to him, and more importantly his message, like a drink of cold water on a very hot day. Among the people I’ve met at the MeetUps and in the crowds I’ve seen in videos of his speeches and rallies the hope is palpable.

On foreign policy and economics he has a clear-eyed analysis that any conscious person can understand and he offers solutions that certainly make sense to me and I suspect they will to many other people as well once they become aware of him and what he is saying. I don’t see any other candidate in either party with either his vision or his character.

If things continue as they are, and I’m doing what I can to insure they do, a fire is going to sweep across this country. Unless someone pulls some sort of substantiated skeleton out of his closet a little more damning than some fifteen-year-old quotes from an obscure newsletter, or unless he goes the way of Paul Wellstone–something I believe will become increasingly likely as the campaign progresses–he is going to be the forefront of an earthquake.

Article I, Section 8 - Powers of Congress

(1) The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

(2) To borrow money on the credit of the United States;

(3) To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;

(4) To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States;

(5) To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;

(6) To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the United States;

(7) To establish Post Offices and Post Roads;

(8) To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;

(9) To constitute Tribunals inferior to the supreme Court;

(10) To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offenses against the Law of Nations;

(11) To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;

(12) To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;

(13) To provide and maintain a Navy;

(14) To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;

(15) To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;

(16) To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;

(17) To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings; And

(18) To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.

Amendment 9 - Construction of Constitution.

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Amendment 10 - Powers of the States and People.

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Even hard-core anarcho-capitalist would have to admit government under the US Constitution would be a vast improvement over the existing system.

We are not allowed the right to speak freely by the words in the 1st Amendment nor does the 6th guarantee a right to trial by jury. The courts do not work for our justice nor do our legislatures work to maintain our freedom. It is only through our diligent defense of those rights that we enforce their validity.

Our rights are undefined and unalienable while those of the government are limited and few as enumerated in the Constitution, Article 1, Section 8. To abandon that concept is to discard the principles for which our Founding Fathers risked their lives and fortunes.

‘Restore the Republic’

It’s sad, really, to see the decline of a once great party: a party that has presided over the biggest expansion of government since the Great Society of Lyndon Johnson, the biggest explosion of federal spending in modern times, and the most serious assault on our constitutional liberties since the imposition of the Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798. Here is a party that once stood for decentralized government asserting the theory of presidential supremacy, in which the power of the executive is exaggerated and mystified until it becomes a monstrous growth of precisely the same sort feared by the Founders, who warned against the return of royalism to America – and wrote a Constitution in which the authority of the other two branches of government served as vital checks and balances against the tendency of the executive to usurp power and throw off restraints.

How did this happen? How is it that the conservatives of today advocate precisely the opposite of what they advocated yesterday? How has the dream of a free America turned into the nightmare of the Homeland Security State, where government can search our homes, read our email, spy on our legal and constitutionally protected activities, all without a warrant or even a nod to anything remotely resembling a legal procedure?

A Choice, Not An Echo

Yep, it’s all just bots and spammers.

We’re trying to support our freedom. You don’t see people walking down the street shouting “Hillary! Hillary!” There’s something that’s passionate and there’s a reason behind what were doing and it’s evident to everyone else who sees it ‘cause no other candidate has this behind him. They might have more money, but it’s corrupt money and Ron Paul’s not accepting that. I think it is pretty evident that we have more heart than money can buy.

That second rally was held on July 6th at noon. It wasn’t announced till almost 7:30 PM the previous evening. At least fourty people showed up at noon on a work day. I’m sorry I was out of town or I would have been there.

Today’s violations by CIA, FBI, NSA and various Pentagon intelligence operations – that include massive wiretapping, data mining, and communications intercepts, kidnapping, and torture – are far more serious and widespread. However, their justification, the alleged threat to national security by “Islamic terrorists,” is tiny compared to the huge threat posed by the Soviet Union’s massive nuclear arsenal during the Cold War.

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