What would Ron Paul do if he were president? Alex Jones asked the former United States House of Representatives member and three-time presidential candidate this question in a Wednesday interview at the Alex Jones Show. Veto the spending bills, bring the US troops home from overseas, and investigate the Federal Reserve and curtail its power are actions included in Paul’s answer. But, Paul also cautions that a president who took such bold actions would likely be impeached with bipartisan support.
Despite United States Congress members insisting that Congress debate and vote on US military actions overseas, congressional leadership has chosen inaction, allowing military actions unilaterally pursued by the executive branch to continue unrestrained. And, when, this year, consideration has begun to move forward on an authorization for use of military force (AUMF), it is in the form of legislation (S.J.Res. 59) sponsored by Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker (R-TN) that would rubber-stamp the US government’s existing wars and sweepingly authorize the executive branch to choose to pursue much more additional military action across the world.
How did we reach this situation so far removed from the US Constitution’s dictate that Congress alone decides if the US goes to war, as well as what is the scope of any such wars? Constitutional scholar Louis Fisher examines this question in detail in his article “Unconstitutional Wars from Truman Forward” in the latest issue of the Center for the Study of Statesmanship’s journal Humanitas.
“American exceptionalism” is a phrase frequently rolled out in support of United States interventions abroad, including US military attacks. So it would likely surprise many people to hear that Ron Paul, the former US House of Representatives member and presidential candidate known for his advocacy for a noninterventionist foreign policy, declared in a panel discussion this week at the TRT World show The Newsmakers that he is a supporter of American exceptionalism. However, there is a catch. Paul defines the American exceptionalism he supports differently than the way that phrase is commonly defined by people who desire the US to be an empire or the policeman on the world.
Ron Paul and interviewing legend Larry King had a provocative discussion last week on King’s Politicking show at RT. The prominent libertarian communicator, who founded the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity in 2013 after leaving the United States House of Representatives, talked with King about a variety of topics running from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s ongoing investigation to the US government’s interventionist foreign policy.
Throughout, Paul provides interesting insights. Here are some samples from the discussion.
Polling suggests approval of state ballot measures in upcoming elections this year that would cause the number of states with legal medical marijuana to grow by three and with legal recreational marijuana to grow by one. Absent earlier legislative action in other states, recreational marijuana legalization approval in Michigan would make it the tenth state with such legalization, and medical marijuana legalization in Oklahoma and Utah, as well as Missouri where petition signatures for ballot measures have not yet been counted and verified, would bring the total number of states with legal medical marijuana up to 33. Tom Angell discusses in a Thursday Forbes article the polling indicating substantial majority support in these states for the respective forms of legalization the ballot measures include.
The movement of states to roll back marijuana prohibition, via ballot measures as well as bills approved by state legislatures and signed into law by governors, is a very important development for advancing respect for liberty in America. First, it significantly limits the war on drugs in America. That war on drugs has been a basis for the expansion of government power at the expense of people’s liberty and safety. Restraining or ending the war on marijuana in a state does not eliminate the war on many other drugs or all the terrible consequences of the broader drug war. But, it does provide relief from a portion of the broader drug war’s harms.
On Tuesday, Rep. Walter Jones (R-NC), who is seeking reelection for what he has indicated will be his final term in the United States House of Representatives, won his Republican Party primary. Jones defeated two other candidates — a Washington, DC lobbyist who holds elective office in the district and one of Jones’ primary opponents from 2016.
Will Rahn wrote a Thursday editorial at CBS News concerning Jones’ primary victory and Jones’ history in the House. In the editorial titled “In praise of Walter Jones,” Rahn refers to Jones as a “man of conviction in Washington” who has been punished by his party’s leadership because of his independent actions, including, Rhan writes, becoming “one of the GOP’s most fervent voices for peace.”
Legalizing marijuana in Illinois would likely cause some drug-sniffing dogs in the state to be killed. That is the claim asserted by Chad Larner, the training director of the K-9 Training Academy in Macon County, Illinois in an in-depth Pantagraph article this week by Ryan Voyles. In Voyles’ article, counterarguments are presented that there will be alternatives to euthanizing such dogs, including involving the dogs continuing to live with their handlers or going through new training. But, assuming such options do not work out for some of the dogs, here is another option that is much better than keeping marijuana legal so some dogs can be saved — send the drug-sniffing dogs to a retirement community for dogs.
On Friday, the National Security Agency (NSA), which has played a primary role in the United States government’s mass surveillance program exposed by whistleblower Edward Snowden, disclosed it had collected 534 million phone calls and text messages of Americans in 2017 — more than three times the amount it collected the year before. But, what about the USA FREEDOM Act that the US Congress passed and President Barack Obama signed into law in 2015? There was much fanfare when the USA FREEDOM Act was enacted and during its consideration in Congress that the legislation’s “reform” would impose major new restraints on the mass surveillance program in order to defend liberty and privacy.
A new episode of Five Minutes Five Issues posted on Saturday. You can listen to it, and read a transcript, below. You can also find previous episodes of the show at Stitcher, iTunes, YouTube, and SoundCloud.
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Read a transcript of the new episode, including links to further information regarding the topics discussed, here:
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The bank account of FIDE, a premier chess organization that governs some major international chess competitions, maintains rules adhered to at many other tournaments, calculates players’ ratings, and awards titles such as Grandmaster, was shut down this week. Peter Doggers reports at chess.com that FIDE officials say UBS Bank was terminating FIDE’s account because FIDE President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov is included “on the sanctions list of the US Department of the Treasury” though “Ilyumzhinov himself has stated that the sanctions were not mentioned by UBS.” Doggers notes that FIDE, also known as the World Chess Federation, has been unable to establish an account with another bank since UBS, a Switzerland bank, announced in February that the FIDE account would be terminated.