Ron Paul Report

[In fairness to my wife, whose name is still on this blog even though it's become almost exclusively mine, she is not as sold on Ron Paul as I am. Not terribly important in the grand scheme of things, I suppose, but I heard her talking to someone about Dr. Paul and heard significant skepticism, so I felt it best to add this comment. -- Liam

Today, Janet and I took the kids and went to meet Republican Presidential candidate Ron Paul, and I have to say I was happily impressed, although I fear he doesn't have much chance to win. He has a rabid, active support base, but it's small. If dedication to candidate carried the day, he might well win in a landslide, but it's total number of votes, and I'm not sure his message is reaching the masses.

Here's the scoop: He seemed generally impassioned about his ideals, which is a refreshing change from a number of other candidates I've seen (such as Rudy "vote for me, or I'll say 9/11 again!" Giuliani, Barack "Vote for me, because I'm new and refreshing" Obama and most of the rest). I like a lot of his message about returning to Constitutional freedoms and behaviors, getting back to the balance of power the Constitution specifies, returning to the states the power that belongs there and returning to the people the liberties we're supposed to have.

Now the bad... he includes in his standard information some things I strongly believe in, such as the above list, and some things which I think are ludicrous, like the regularly asserted and disproved idea that someone wants to build a "NAFTA super-highway" connecting Mexico, the US and Canada with no borders or checkpoints, or the idea that the U.N. is planning to start levying taxes on US citizens. Such items are merely scare tactics, and show that he's either not above trying to whip a crowd into a frenzy through fear mongering OR that he's not smart enough to recognize the true threats from those made up by OTHERS as fear mongering.

Still, I think this country needs about four years of someone like Ron Paul to rebalance the country and return some of the civil liberties and the imperial power which have been usurped by Presidents in my life time (and especially in the last six and a half years). My gut sense is that in four years it'll be time to switch horses, some of Paul's convictions go too far (such as completely withdrawing from the world in the form of severing our ties to the UN, the ICC, NAFTA and NATO), but I definitely think four years of returning checks and balances, civil liberties and balanced budgets are worth some of the excesses, and I think it unlikely that he'd be able to get to some of the more extreme items on his agenda until after he'd taken care of the more important and main-stream ones.

All in all, if Ron Paul makes it past the primary, as of this point in the election cycle he's got my vote.

Liam.

Questions for Candidates

Janet and I attended a campaign stop for John Edwards today. Reserving the right to change my opinion as I learn more, as of right now my favorite two options for President are John Edwards on the left and Ron Paul on the right.

Anyway, as is the nature of campaign stops, there's never enough time for the candidate to answer everyone's questions, and so as he began to run out of time, he said "Look, I owe it to you all to answer all of your questions. If you have any that I didn't get to, please send them to me and I promise I'll get your answer to you."

Now, unfortunately, I'd rather have seen him answer mine live rather than have time to think or consult others (or even have a staffer answer), but such is life. So I sent my question in.

I just thought I'd share my question, a question I'd actually like to see all of them (except Mr. Paul, who has already answered it to my satisfaction) answer.

If one actually reads the Constitution, it's clear that the founders of our country intended the states to be the strongest section of our government and the Federal government weaker. Additionally, it's pretty clear they intended most of the power to be in the hands of the Legislative and Judicial branches, with the Executive a weaker third sibling.

And yet right now we seem to have it exactly upside down, with as close to an imperial presidency as we've ever had with significantly less power in the Congress (and a push to limit that of the Judiciary) and even less actually left to the states to decide.

My question is a difficult one for anyone who wants to become President: What will you do if elected to limit your own (and future Presidents') power and restore the Constitutionally intended balance to government here in our nation?


Liam.

Score One for Incompetance

If you're still one of the few remaining people who honestly believe that the Bush Administration is good on terror issues, or who believes the meme that only Republicans can do anything about terrorism, I invite you to look at the recent news stories regarding the pre-reporting on the 9/11 bin Laden video tape of last month.

Apparently the early information about the tape was obtained through secret intelligence means by a small private company called "SITE Intelligence Group". That company says that the channels through which it got this and other information about al Qaeda operations have now gone dark and useless, because knowledge that we had obtained the pre-release copy got out into the public (and of course back to al Qaeda) after senior administration officials leaked it to Fox News and others.

So, what's the outcome of all of this? Well, there are several.

1. A good, solid source of intelligence regarding al Qaeda has been identified and shut down on al Qaeda's end, so we no longer have that pipeline.
2. A private company (remember, Republicans are supposed to be the pro-business party) has lost a major asset.
3. That private company and others are going to think twice before offering intelligence to the administration again, knowing that by doing so they may once again have their sources shut down through administration bungling.

Oh, and the response from the administration and right wing bloggers seems to be that this didn't really damage our intelligence at all and that it's a non-story. These would be the same people who last year were positively frothing at the mouth claiming that the mere knowledge of the existence of the US wire-tapping program was severely damaging to our al Qaeda fighting abilities. So apparently when it's a leak they started and which allowed them to look good, but actually closes down a significant source of information, that's good. When it's a leak they didn't start and makes them look bad, but doesn't really tell anyone anyhing that a halfway intelligent bad guy would have already at least considered, that's bad.

If you want a few links to the story, you can easily Google on "bin laden tape release" and "SITE intelligence", but here are two to get you started:

The Washington Post

The Boston Globe


Liam.