President Donald Trump has to “fear the intelligence community,” declared Andrew Napolitano in a new interview with host Neil Cavuto at Fox News, after “American scoundrels” in the “unelected deep state bureaucracy” leaked information about Michael Flynn’s conversation with the Russian ambassador to the United States to get Flynn fired and “humiliate” Trump.
In a Monday The Duran article titled “5 real news sites you should read,” Adam Garrie praised, and included in the title-referenced list, the website of the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.
Former US House of Representatives Member Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) presented an urgent warning to the American people in a Wednesday Fox Business interview regarding the resignation of Michael Flynn from the position of national security advisor after information was leaked about a phone conversation Flynn had with the Russian ambassador to the United States. “At the core” of the intercepting of the then-incoming national security advisor’s phone conversation and the sharing with media of related information by US intelligence officials, Kucinich says, “is an effort by some in the intelligence community to upend any positive relationship between the US and Russia.”
Whether people use drugs is “none of the government’s business in the first place,” declares economics and politics writer David Stockman. Instead, says Stockman, “the philosophically correct position is that what people do in their private lives, what they use for sedatives or intoxicants or recreation,” is “their business — it’s not the government’s.” Stockman makes these comments in a fascinating new video interview with host Jacob Hornberger of the Future of Freedom Foundation.
On December 31, I was a guest on Joshua Bennett’s radio show on KFAR radio in Fairbanks, Alaska. Given the day, much of our wide-ranging, two-hour discussion focused on events of the last year and what may come in 2017, including what President Donald Trump will mean for United States intervention abroad and liberty in America.
Looking forward to the Trump presidency, I predicted, pointing to something similar that happened with President Ronald Reagan, that Trump would trade away following through on his stated desire to reduce spending in some areas in order to gain support in Congress for increased spending in other areas such as infrastructure and the military. The result, I concluded, would be a “compromise” of “increasing spending across-the-board.”
Continuing with predictions for a Trump presidency, I pointed to policing as an area where I expected “Trump as president would seek to expand government very likely.” In support of this conclusion, I referenced Trump’s support for New York City-style stop-and-frisk, the rolling back of restrictions on the US government supplying military weapons to local police, surveillance of Muslims in America, and the building of a wall between the US and Mexico. Trump talks about using the wall, I noted, for fighting the drug war in addition to preventing illegal immigration.
Regarding Trump’s potential foreign policy, the discussion turned to matters including Trump’s back-and-forth position on torture, his support for imprisoning people at Guantanamo, and his desire to reverse much or all the détente with Iran and Cuba that the Obama administration obtained. A foreign policy bright spot was the potential that Trump would take action to reduce the US government’s animosity toward Russia.
While the radio show discussion addressed several actions the Trump administration may take to threaten liberty and increase foreign intervention, I held out some hope, saying, “I’m always hopeful that there is a chance that we’ll have a president that at the end of his time in office the political system is better than it was before, that liberty is respected more.”
At the completion of Trump’s presidency, it would be great to inform Bennett that my hope had been fulfilled. But, the early days of the Trump administration are not boosting my optimism.
Listen to the complete interview here:
Reprinted with permission from the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.
In a new interview with host Michael Tracey at The Young Turks, libertarian communicator and former presidential candidate Ron Paul expressed much concern about President Donald Trump potentially appointing Elliott Abrams to be deputy secretary of state. Paul says Abrams has a “lousy” record. Continuing, Paul calls Abrams “the neocon’s neocon,” noting that “there has never been an intervention overseas that he didn’t seem to enjoy.”
Paul says in the interview that all of these interventions that Abrams supports did not “work.” Victory may be claimed in a sense from these interventions, Paul suggests, if they “remade the Middle East” so “we had thriving democracies there where civil liberties are being protected and [each country] had a constitution somewhat leaning toward ours.” But, in fact, Paul says “that isn’t the case” as the wars have caused more harm than good.
Indeed, Trump has discussed this failure of US intervention in regard to the Iraq War. Throughout the presidential campaign, Trump brought up his opposition to the United States starting the Iraq War in 2003. In a February of 2016 debate, Trump called the Iraq War a “big, fat mistake,” a mistake that, Trump continued, cost two trillion dollars and thousands of lives. In addition, Trump asserted that “Iran is taking over Iraq, with the second-largest oil reserves in the world.” Concluding, Trump said:
George Bush made a mistake. We can make mistakes, but that one was a beauty. We should have never been in Iraq. We have destabilized the Middle East.
Therefore, it surprises many people that reports suggest Trump is considering Abrams for a State Department appointment. Abrams continues to support President George W. Bush’s decision to wage war on Iraq.
A new episode of Five Minutes Five Issues posted on Thursday. 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.
Listen to the new episode here:
Read a transcript of the new episode, including links to further information regarding the topics discussed, here:
The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity welcomes you to Five Minutes Five Issues.
Starting in five four three two one.
In a recent interview at CNN, David Stockman, who is a Ron Paul Institute Advisory Board member and was director of the Office of Management and Budget during the Reagan administration, critiqued the Trump administration for pushing militarism and the drug war that fuel the problems they are supposedly fighting.
On Thursday, the United States House of Representatives approved H.J.Res. 40. The legislation prohibits the imposition of regulations published in December that define a process for placing individuals, who the Social Security Administration unilaterally determines have sufficient mental health problems, into the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) database so the government may restrain them from purchasing and possessing guns. The regulations, which had been in the works for years, would breach the privacy of affected individuals, while also denying respect for their due process rights and their constitutionally protected right to bear arms.
To reach President Donald Trump for approval or a veto, the legislation must first pass in the US Senate as well.
The House action is welcomed by many advocates for respecting individual rights. But, it is a relatively small step. Remaining in place, even should H.J.Res. 40 become law, is the NICS Improvements Amendments Act (HR 2640) that provided the authority under which the regulations H.J.Res. 40 overrides were created. When HR 2640 was considered on the House floor in 2007, then-Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) warned of the rights violations it would spawn. In his floor speech, Paul stated that HR 2640 “pressures States and mandates Federal agencies to dump massive amounts of information about the private lives of all Americans into a central Federal Government database” and “seriously undermines the privacy rights of all Americans, gun owners and non-gun owners alike.”
A new episode of Five Minutes Five Issues posted on Friday. 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.
Listen to the new episode here:
Read a transcript of the new episode, including links to further information regarding the topics discussed, here:
The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity welcomes you to Five Minutes Five Issues.
Starting in five four three two one.