Adam Dick

Eugene V. Debs nearly 100 years ago was a political prisoner in the United States for the “crime” of opposing the United States government’s participation in World War I and conscription of people to fight in that war. In March of 1919, the US Supreme Court, pointing to the Espionage Act of 1917 for justification, upheld Debs’ conviction by a trial jury and ten-year prison sentence for making antiwar comments in a June 16, 1918 Canton, Ohio speech.

Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. wrote the Supreme Court’s short Debs v. United States opinion that upheld the conviction and ten-year prison sentence of Debs for two charges that Holmes described as follows:

This is an indictment under the Espionage Act of June 15, 1917… It has been cut down to two counts, originally the third and fourth. The former of these alleges that on or about June 16, 1918, at Canton, Ohio, the defendant caused and incited and attempted to cause and incite insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny and refusal of duty in the military and naval forces of the United States and with intent so to do delivered, to an assembly of people, a public speech, set forth. The fourth count alleges that he obstructed and attempted to obstruct the recruiting and enlistment service of the United States and to that end and with that intent delivered the same speech, again set forth.

In effect, Debs was incarcerated for exercising his right to free speech regarding two political matters — the US government choosing to participate in World War I and the US government using the draft to help fight that war. One may expect the justices to have reread the First Amendment to the US Constitution and promptly overturned Debs’ conviction. However, Holmes explains that a prior Supreme Court decision had already settled the inapplicability of Debs’ First Amendment defense.

Continue reading at the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.

KCRA TV is reporting that the Davis, California City Council voted Tuesday evening, after hearing from concerned people at the city council’s meeting, to get rid of the police department’s Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected military vehicle. The police department had obtained the MRAP, which is valued at nearly $700,000, for free recently from the US government.

Will Davis, California one day be seen as the beginning of a nationwide local government backlash against police militarization in the US?

Continue reading at the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.

You might think that, with the US government debt increasing year after year and bloated US military spending nearly equal to the combined military spending of the rest of the world, the US government would try to find a way to fight the Islamic State without increasing spending. Supposing the US government proceeds with further escalating yet another Middle East war, couldn’t President Barack Obama and Congress at least work together to pay the bill by transferring billions of spare dollars from elsewhere in the vast and wasteful US military and intelligence budgets? How about starting by canning the US government’s mass spying program?

If you are asking these sorts of questions, you obviously do not have the qualifications to serve as a US House of Representatives committee chairman overseeing the distribution of largess to the military-industrial complex.

Continue reading at the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.

In a Ron Paul Channel commentary on Wednesday, Ron Paul took issue with aspects of the August 7 New York Times article “Has the ‘Libertarian Moment’ Finally Arrived?” In particular, Paul argues that the article describes the growing influence of libertarianism wrongly when it pigeonholes libertarianism within the Republican Party. Instead, Paul explains, the crucial issue is Americans’ expanding understanding of libertarian ideas.

Paul explains that a shift toward libertarian ideas becoming dominant in America is arising from a change in the views of Americans and “has nothing to do really with the Republican Party.” The important battle, Paul explains, is between liberty and interventionism, not between Republicans and Democrats.

Continue reading at the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.

Much American public attention is focused on the US military escalation in Iraq and, to some extent, the rivalry for leadership in that nation where Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has worn out his US government welcome. Among other offenses, Maliki failed to ensure Iraq agreed in 2011 to a status of forces agreement that would have enabled the continued presence of thousands of US troops by protecting them from liability for violations of Iraqi laws.

Americans seem to be paying much less attention to the continuing, drawn-out Afghanistan national election. International reporter and columnist Eric Margolis suggests the election is being orchestrated by the US government to establish a new status of forces agreement with Afghanistan.

Margolis, an RPI Academic Board member, described on the Scott Horton Show this week the covert intrigue behind the Afghan presidential election:

[Afghanistan President Hamid] Karzai has proven to be a naughty puppet. He came from central casting — CIA central casting. He was put in power. But, as he stayed in power, he started adopting policies that were more nationalistic than obedient to the US.

The main thing was that the US wanted what is called a status of forces agreement — it’s a fancy word for colonial agreement — that would have allowed US troops to stay on in Afghanistan indefinitely and exempt them from any kind of legal restraints. Karzai wouldn’t agree with this because he wanted to carve himself out a future as a genuine Afghan nationalist leader rather than a cat’s paw of Washington.

But, his term is expiring, so Washington has come up with two other candidates who are both also from central casting. And they fought ostensibly an election, which turned out rigged and unfair. . . Washington is trying to bang their heads together to create some kind of ostensive legitimate Afghan government that will then sign this document allowing the US to stay on for a number of years or forever.

Continue reading at the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.