Liberty Maven

I’ve long held that just about every U.S. President and U.S. Congressman deserve to be hanged (or at least some sort of punishment) for violating their oaths of office.

Upon entering office, U.S. Presidents must pledge:

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

Similarly, members of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives must affirm:

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.

If our public servants aren’t held to their oaths, then the oaths are rendered meaningless.

In similar fashion, Bruce Fein has opined in the San Francisco Chronicle, that the actions of President Bush and Vice President Cheney have violated the Constitution in a variety of ways, and indeed deserve censure.  Here’s a piece of what Fein had to say:

By wielding the threat of international terrorism, the Bush-Cheney team put the nation on a permanent war footing – the first time in history that war has been undertaken against a tactic. They maintained that the entire post-9/11 world is an active battlefield where United States military force may be used to kill suspected members of al Qaeda irrespective of international boundaries.

They claimed executive privilege and state secrets to conduct secret government – thereby circumventing political and legal accountability. This included directives to former White House officials Karl Rove and Harriet Miers to flout congressional subpoenas for testimony. They detained hundreds of people (including American citizens) as enemy combatants without accusation or trial. They authorized torture (waterboarding and extraordinary rendition), abductions, secret prisons and illegal surveillance of American citizens.

Like its immediate predecessors, the 110th Congress eagerly yielded its authorities – even the power of the purse – to the president. The Iraqi War Resolution, the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Act, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act amendments, and the declination to hold Rove in contempt of Congress were emblematic.

If left unrebuked, the Bush-Cheney usurpations of power will become part of the constitutional firmament and risk creating a safe harbor for future presidential abuses. Every member of Congress, moreover, is required to take an oath to “support (the) Constitution” pursuant to Article VI. There is no corresponding oath to support the Republican or Democratic parties or to subordinate the Constitution in the name of political harmony. Censure would be no novelty.

Read the whole article.

We had a chance to capture the audio of liberty hero Judge Andrew Napolitano being interviewed today on BreakTheMatrix.com by host Rick Williams. As usual The Judge doesn’t disappoint. He discusses practical measures we can take to fight for liberty in an era of bigger government, the Obama victory, Ron Paul, lawyers, and other freedom oriented topics. Listen below.

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It’s quite amusing (if not nauseating) to hear McCain and Palin calling Obama a socialist at every turn if you pay the slightest attention to the ideas McCain embraces.  A nice little article at HighClearing.com successfully reams McCain for his hypocrisy:

The word “socialism” can mean many things to many people, anything from Western European style social welfare to state ownership of the means of production to the New Deal or the Great Society or a wide range of other usages. I’ll let those who know (or at least claim to know) more about the real meaning of the word have the debate over which usage is proper (mostly because I hate debates over whether somebody is using a politically-charged word correctly). Instead, I’ll engage the McCain rhetoric on its own terms.

McCain, just like Obama, believes that taxes should be levied for the purpose of funding social programs that redistribute income downwards. (We’ll leave aside, for the moment, the fact that both of them also believe that taxes should be levied for the purpose of funding a bloated military-industrial complex and other things that redistribute at least some of the income upward.) McCain and Obama may envision different forms and scopes for those programs, and those differences may or may not have profound consequences in practice. However, the McCain rhetoric is being employed to argue that just about any downward redistribution is a type of socialism. If it is (at least in McCain’s usage of the term) then McCain is a socialist. Maybe not as much of a socialist as Obama (we’ll leave aside welfare for the rich, for the moment) but a socialist nonetheless.

Read the rest here.

It seems to be Bob Barr day today thanks in part to his several media appearances. Bob Barr went into the liberal mass of confusion known as Air America today when he was interviewed by Thom Hartmann. The majority of the interview was quite contentious as you might expect. In the end they run out of time in the middle (or end) of a discussion on the “general welfare” clause in the Constitution. Hartmann seems to think that it allows for policies such as nationalized health care while Barr tells Hartmann that he is misinterpreting it. The audio lasts about 15 minutes. Listen below.

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When I heard William “BJ” Lawson speak for the first time in person I said to myself, “This is the Ron Paul Republican who can win”. Then I checked out his opponent David Price and immediately thought, “I know Lawson can win.” At first glance, the problem is the heavily Democratic North Carolina district he is in, but if you dig a bit deeper, Lawson is the perfect candidate for a district of this kind. He is not your normal present day Republican. Lawson has the ability to attract those on all sides of the political spectrum much like Ron Paul did during his own campaign.

Below you will discover the Liberty Maven rankings for BJ Lawson on the Paul-O-Meter, where candidates and current lawmakers can be rated on how closely they are in line with Dr. Ron Paul on the issues. To learn about the Paul-O-Meter methodology please see this article. You may also assign your own rankings or request a candidate be added to the system.

Continue reading to see if BJ Lawson truly deserves the moniker “Ron Paul Jr.”

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“Beginning Oct. 1 for 12 months, the 1st BCT will be under the day-to-day control of U.S. Army North, the Army service component of Northern Command, as an on-call federal response force for natural or manmade emergencies and disasters, including terrorist attacks.”

“…this new mission marks the first time an active unit has been given a dedicated assignment to NorthCom, a joint command established in 2002 to provide command and control for federal homeland defense efforts and coordinate defense support of civil authorities.”

“The 1st BCT’s soldiers also will learn how to use ‘the first ever nonlethal package that the Army has fielded,’ 1st BCT commander Col. Roger Cloutier said, referring to crowd and traffic control equipment and nonlethal weapons designed to subdue unruly or dangerous individuals without killing them.”

So, then, what is an unruly crowd?  Is it anything at all akin to the peaceful, park-loving protesters and bystanders who were spontaneously surrounded by SWAT Police in full riot gear and arrested on Labor Day in St. Paul, Minnesota?

Folks, this concerns me.  In fact, quite frankly, this makes me want to go run and find a cave.

Let’s look at the big picture:

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Sarah Palin In The Land Of McCain's Oz

It is now time to rate the vice presidential candidates on the Paul-O-Meter. We start with John McCain’s VP pick Sarah Palin. The perfect strategic pick for McCain, Palin has little history. She’s been Governor of Alaska for less than two years, but now that McCain’s handlers are pulling Palin’s puppet strings it is difficult to see a difference between the two.

Here we examine Palin on 20 issues to see how she stacks up to Ron Paul. Hopefully this will help some see the lips through the lipstick.

If you’d like to see more ratings or rate Palin or any other candidate or lawmaker head on over to Paul-O-Meter.com and explore the possibilities.

If you want to delve into the question of whether Palin truly is similar to Ron Paul read onward.

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Bob Barr

This afternoon WashingtonPost.com had a Q&A session with Bob Barr. I found it somewhat annoying that he didn’t answer all the questions (or they weren’t included in the transcript) when someone asked a two- or three-part question, but nonetheless it could serve well for those not too familiar with Bob Barr. Oh, and the closet Libertarian purist in me cringed when he called for “some form of a consumption type tax” in lieu of the IRS and payroll deductions.

Read it here.

In 2005 Judge Andrew Napolitano gave an interview to Reason Magazine’s Nick Gillespie promoting his new book (at the time) “Constitutional Chaos“. In the interview he outlines the progression of liberty lost in America.

His explanation demonstrates the incremental steps taking us from freedom towards tyranny. The next time someone attempts to argue with you about having to sacrifice liberty for safety point them to this interview.

Reason: What’s your case against the USA PATRIOT Act?

Napolitano: Let’s put aside all of the procedural problems with enacting it. Forget about the fact that there was no debate. Forget about the fact that most members of Congress didn’t even have an opportunity to read it. It is a direct assault on at least three amendments to the Constitution: the First Amendment, the Fourth Amendment, and the Fifth Amendment. The PATRIOT Act legitimates the notion that if we give up certain freedoms, the government will keep us safer. I reject that notion from a moral and legal point of view. I also reject it from a practical point of view. It doesn’t work. The government doesn’t need our freedoms to keep us safer. No one–no lawyer, judge, or historian–can point to a single incident in American history where national security was impaired because someone insisted on their right to free speech or their right to privacy or their right to due process.

The PATRIOT Act encourages what the government calls “national security letters”–basically, self-written search warrants. It violates the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits self-written search warrants. The PATRIOT Act and two of its predecessors, the Foreign Intelligence Security Act of 1977 [FISA] and the Electronic Privacy Act of 1986, authorized the government to obtain search warrants by bypassing [longstanding tradition in] the courts. Today an FBI agent investigating a person need only satisfy her or himself that the person under investigation is a threat to national security. The agent doesn’t have to demonstrate evidence to a judge.

The Judge can authoritatively articulate our loss of liberty better than anyone and that includes Ron Paul. It is a shame he is beholden to FOX News and cannot show bias about candidates he supports. It is pretty obvious that he is a Ron Paul supporter after his rousing introduction of Ron Paul last year, calling him the “Thomas Jefferson of our day”.

He deserves a medal for doing his radio show along side neocon torture supporter and warmonger Brian Kilmeade without choking him.

Read the great full interview with Judge Napolitano here.

Over at NolanChart.com, Walt Thiessen has written a critical article on Bob Barr’s Libertarian campaign for President.  It is a negative article that I, unfortunately, mostly agree with.  Thiessen makes three major points:

1. Although some polls put Bob Barr in the 6% range in June, all polls now put him in the 1-2% range.
2. Measuring up to Ron Paul’s, Barr’s fundraising is comparatively non-existent.
3. Barr has “failed to win over the party faithful”, and has failed to adequately explain his support of unconstitutional bills in his past.

I agree with him on the first 2½ points, but when he and other people continue to say that Bob Barr has done nothing to alleviate the concerns of those who question his part, I strongly disagree.  In every interview I’ve seen where people question his past support for the Patriot Act, the Drug War, etc., he has admitted his mistake, and explained how he seen the light and actually worked hard to reverse these things.  What else can the man do?  Only time will tell whether or not he is sincere or just being political expedient, but that’s not part of this argument.  Bob has worked tirelessly for the past 5 years against the Patriot Act and it’s successors, FISA, and has even joined up with the American Civil Liberties Union and the Marijuana Policy Project in support of medicinal drug use.  What else can the man do to alleviate concerns? If you simply choose not to trust him, that’s one thing.  But to say that he’s done nothing is simply ludicrous.

Thiessen concludes by predicting Barr will get less votes in November than Badnarik’s 397,000 in 2004, which I feel is quite astonishing.  I certainly hope this won’t be the case.

Read the article at NolanChart.com here.