We here at Liberty Maven are excited to have the opportunity to interview a true patriot candidate who some have called “Ron Paul Jr.”. His name is William “B.J.” Lawson and upon reading his answers to our first segment’s questions it is obvious the Constitution forms the backbone of his beliefs and his campaign to represent North Carolina’s 4th District in Congress.
If you haven’t heard of B.J. Lawson until now and you are a lover of liberty you are in for a treat. If we could cast a spell on every single person in the country to donate and help out with Lawson’s campaign we’d do it. In that vein please enjoy the first interview segment below and then head over to LawsonLibertyFund.com and pledge $5 or $300 to help out with his Ron Paul style money bomb on June 29th.
LM: What was your motivation for running for Congress? You are facing an incumbent Democrat David Price in an overly Democratic district; however back in 1994 a Republican unseated Price thanks to the “Contract With America” effort at that time. Does that previous defeat of Price give you hope for victory over him this time around?
Lawson: My motivation running for Congress is to advance a Constitutional federal government, and to question the “politics as usual” that is bankrupting our country and eviscerating our freedoms. Today’s political process is simply broken: we have legislators who don’t read bills before they vote, we have Congress delegating rule making to unelected bureaucrats and lobbyists, we have legislators piling special favors into legislation that is deemed likely to pass, and few even question if proposed legislation is the Constitutional role of the federal government. These are symptoms of a political process that no longer represents the people.
While Price was defeated once with the 1994 Republican landslide, this year’s environment is much different. The Republican party is adrift, and lacks a clear platform after the past eight years. Furthermore, our district is a strongly Democratic. However, the vast majority of voters know we need change — and David Price, as a 22 year incumbent, personifies the status quo.
It’s not so much his 1994 defeat that gives me hope for victory, but more what he’s done since his 1996 re-entry into Congress: not much. Rep. Price is an Establishment candidate whose voting record reflects the party line, and shows little leadership or concern for the critical questions facing our nation: out of control inflation, unsustainable government spending and entitlements, declining civil liberties, and failed interventionism abroad.
The voters are demanding change, and this year they have a choice for principled leadership advocating a Constitutional federal government.
Bob Barr was interviewed by Al Rantel today on KABC Los Angeles radio. This was a decidedly friendly interview where Barr was able to make his points and get almost wholesale agreement from the host. The host seems to be exactly the type of voter Barr is trying to reach. The interview lasts just over 15 minutes.
We just received word from the Bob Barr campaign that he will appear on ABC’s national TV news show “This Week With George Stephanopoulos” on Sunday July 6th. Ron Paul followers will remember Paul’s appearance on the same show where Stephanopoulos quickly gave a snide retort to the chances of him winning the GOP nomination. Those four simple words, “That’s not gonna happen”, only invigorated the Paul supporters more.
After the CNN coverage yesterday, I think at this point it is safe to say that Bob Barr is getting some serious main stream media coverage which only enhances his ability to spread that sweet liberty message to the masses. Now the question is starting to become: Will that attention turn into real votes for Barr at the polls in November?
Much has been made amongst the Ron Paul faithful about who Ron Paul will end up endorsing for President. The only thing they all seem to agree on is that it won’t be John McCain. It seems that the sentiments are evenly split between Bob Barr and Chuck Baldwin. The truth is it doesn’t really matter who wins his endorsement. Anyone who has followed Ron Paul knows what issues represent true liberty. They don’t need Ron Paul’s expressed approval to know which candidates support liberty and which do not.
For those that don’t already know here is a refresher. If your last name is Obama or McCain you are anti-liberty and don’t understand the Constitution even though you will swear to defend and uphold it when you take office. If your last name is Barr or Baldwin you are pro-liberty and you understand that the Constitution is the supreme law of the land. That is really all you need to know. Ron Paul has De-facto endorsed both Barr and Baldwin. It is unlikely Paul will officially endorse either candidate.
Why is it unlikely that he endorse one or both of them officially? The answer is simple. He’s a sitting Republican Congressman. If he were to publicly and officially endorse someone from another party he could be committing political suicide. He could lose his committee memberships. He could lose his seniority. It is important for Paul to walk this political line in order to help return the Republican Party back to its “Old Right” principles. He could not do so if he loses his status as a senior Congressman. He would be jeopardizing his ability to directly question the Federal Reserve Chairman about monetary policy. That is something he seems to relish so much, as do his supporters.
The only other evidence that can be given to support the argument that he will not endorse a non-Republican candidate is that he has played politics with his endorsements over the past year. He refused to endorse against any incumbent Republicans even when the challenge came from a liberty minded Ron Paul Republican. To this day he still has not endorsed against any incumbent neo-conservative Republican. The only motivation for doing this has to be maintaining his Congressional status on committees and other relationships. This runs at odds with his rhetoric of castigating the party for its neo-con ways. He won’t put his endorsements where his mouth is.
So stop waiting for Ron Paul to endorse Bob Barr or Chuck Baldwin. Pick one to endorse yourself then go out and campaign for your choice. When you do so you know you are campaigning for liberty whether Ron Paul gives his endorsement seal of approval or not.
We support Bob Barr over Chuck Baldwin, but supporting either is a victory for liberty. Writing in Ron Paul is a victory for your own conscience but it won’t help liberty win. However, supporting Barr, Baldwin, or writing in Ron Paul is infinitely better for liberty than voting for Obamccain.
Tomorrow Bob Barr will be interviewed by Al Rantel on KABC 790 at 2:05pm Eastern. Last Friday Wayne Allyn Root was interviewed by Rantel. He certainly didn’t sound like a neo-conservative war monger in this interview. In fact, he sounded much like Ron Paul and Bob Barr. He admits in the interview to doing a 180 on the Iraq war. Some will look at this transformation as mere convenience, others will take him at his word. Some are stuck somewhere in the middle. All in all though Root gives a pretty good interview.
Today Bob Barr received some significant main stream media coverage regarding his potential spoiler role for John McCain on CNN’s The Situation Room. The video below contains more than 5 minutes of footage covering Barr. The first is a segment with Wolf Blitzer discussing Barr’s impact on the election with two talking heads from the left and right. Next, Jack Cafferty covers Barr with his Cafferty File question. The final clip are the answers from viewers to that question. Ron Paul gets a few mentions as well.
This is not only great coverage for Barr but also for the Libertarian Party, especially the Cafferty portion. The viewer email by “Jacob” wins for best response to the question.
Bob Barr was interviewed by Dennis Miller on his syndicated radio show today. They discussed much about FISA and Barr’s role in the election. Interesting how Miller cuts Barr off at the end of the interview. It was an odd thing to do. Miller apparently believes that Obama and McCain will actually debate the substantive nature of issues like FISA, limited government, taxes, etc.. Miller cut Barr off for suggesting that his own candidacy will move the debate more towards the fundamentals rather than the usual political surface. The overall meat of the interview is pretty good though. The interview is about 14 minutes long (commercials stripped out).
According to the media the big debate over the FISA warrantless wiretapping bill is because the Democrats don’t want retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies and the Republicans do. Indeed this is an important part of the debate, but it is hardly what the real debate should be. It just shows that our lawmakers care little about the rule of law in the Constitution. If they did care the debate would be about whether it is permitted by the Constitution to spy on American citizens without a warrant.
Instead they focus on the telecom immunity portion which is almost just as bad, but from a liberty standpoint focusing on this portion of FISA reeks of political misdirection. The recent so called compromise on FISA by the Democrats clearly demonstrates neither party truly cares about “upholding the Constitution”. Someone needs to remind them of their oath.
It is good advice to always be weary when a lawmaker uses the word “compromise”. A zebra truly is a horse designed by a committee. This FISA zebra like so many others coming from “compromise” just means a bigger and costlier federal government and less freedom for American citizens.
It is close to impossible technologically to guarantee that government eavesdropping as outlined by FISA will only be done when one side of the communication resides outside of the United States. This says nothing of the fact that government required monitoring systems put in place by communications companies give hacker terrorists another method of breaching the system. So it can be argued that FISA is not just unconstitutional but it makes America more vulnerable to terrorist attacks, not less.
Ever since Bob Barr became the Libertarian Presidential nominee he has been met with venomous criticism from those that can’t let bygones be bygones. There is no such thing as “forgiveness” apparently. Their distrust of Barr blinds and binds them. They are not just letting a golden opportunity for liberty pass them by, but are openly recruiting others to the anti-Barr cause. I feel sorry for their children should they ever make a mistake, own up to the mistake, and denounce it. For as long as they live they will be punished for that mistake no matter what measures they attempt to make up for that mistake.
I support Bob Barr because I believe in human liberty. It seems to me that if one truly believes in liberty then they should also believe in personal redemption. How can one believe in individual liberty but not accept Bob Barr’s own denouncement of his anti-liberty votes? Many of the Ron Paul faithful complained at the seemingly conspiratorial media attacks against Paul during his campaign. Now some of those very same Ron Paul supporters are attacking Barr in a similar fashion. The attacks on Bob Barr have now reached the trite stage. So trite, in fact, that they can be made into a list. Below is the countdown with the lowdown.
An Associated Press story on Bob Barr worrying the GOP about taking votes away from John McCain is currently linked on the front page of Yahoo. The story is just a standard refrain of the conventional wisdom of Bob Barr’s spoiler role in November.
“Bob could be the Ralph Nader of 2008,” said Dan Schnur, a GOP consultant in California who worked on McCain’s 2000 campaign but is not involved in this year’s contest. Consumer advocate Nader is the third-party candidate many Democrats blame for helping George W. Bush narrowly win in 2000.
Rep. John Linder, a Republican who defeated Barr in 2002 after Georgia’s Democratic-controlled Legislature redrew congressional boundaries to put the two lawmakers in the same district, said he didn’t think Barr would top 4 percent of the vote.
“But in some states that may be enough,” Linder said.
Democrats seem gleeful at the prospect. Tad Devine, a Washington-based Democratic strategist, said Republicans “are crazy if they aren’t worried about Barr.”
“Undoubtedly any votes he gets come out of McCain’s votes,” Devine said. “He hurts them.”
Liberty Maven
We here at Liberty Maven are excited to have the opportunity to interview a true patriot candidate who some have called “Ron Paul Jr.”. His name is William “B.J.” Lawson and upon reading his answers to our first segment’s questions it is obvious the Constitution forms the backbone of his beliefs and his campaign to represent North Carolina’s 4th District in Congress.
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