Adam Dick

Ken Womble has written convincingly regarding legal matters, including the desirability of prosecuting cops who lie about other cops’ killings. However, Womble, in a Monday Mimesis Law article, provides several not-so-convincing arguments for repealing the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution while keeping in place other constitutional provisions Womble lists — “freedom of speech, assembly, due process, voting, etc.”

Womble provides three arguments in support of his conclusion. First, he says that the right to keep and bear arms is distinguishable from other rights mentioned in the Constitution because, “[i]n our nation’s almost 240 years of existence, the 2nd Amendment is the only time our leaders have granted a constitutional right to possess tools.”

When you think about it, this is not much of a distinction. The freedom of speech that Womble seeks to distinguish from the right to bear arms would be of much less value without the ability to use microphones, telephones, video cameras, audio recording equipment, radio and TV, the internet, means of transportation, and many other tools. Indeed, listed rather redundantly in the First Amendment is the freedom of the press along with the freedom of speech. A major tool of the press is the printing press and its modern analogues such as a computer providing word processing, video editing, and website posting capabilities. Say you print your communication on paper, then you can use additional tools, such as trucks to transport the printed communication and distribution bins from which people can pick up the printed communication.

Tools do not play a major role in the exercise of only the freedom of speech and its cousin the freedom of the press. Tools also permeate the exercise of the other rights Womble lists. Assembly uses the tool of a suitable room in which people can meet, along with other tools including microphones, loudspeakers, chairs, and tables. And the tools of speech and press can be used to alert people about a future assembly or about what occurred at a past assembly. Due process would be tough if a defendant were deprived of access the tools with which to conduct legal research and to draft and submit legal briefs. Imagine voting without any tools — no ballots and voter rolls, for example.

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

In a new Fox Business interview, host Kennedy asks Ron Paul the question many people have considered the last couple days: With Paul’s son Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) having dropped out of the presidential race this week, how about the senior Paul jump into the 2016 presidential contest by seeking the Libertarian Party nomination? Paul responds that such a run is “not in the cards.”

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

Rep. Walter Jones (R-NC), speaking Tuesday at a hearing of the US House Armed Services Committee, returned to a subject he has addressed many times — the US government’s incredible waste of money and lives in Afghanistan. Providing one example to illustrate the “boondoggles” that permeate US activity in Afghanistan, Jones shed light on the six million dollars the US spent on a program involving importing “rare blonde Italian goats” to Afghanistan. The pricey goats, Jones relates, may have then just been eaten instead of being used to boost the cashmere industry in Afghanistan.

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

The Republican National Committee (RNC) was not happy that Ron Paul, who had won second place in Minnesota’s February of 2012 caucuses, ended up with over three-quarters of the state’s delegates to the Republican National Convention. The RNC was not happy with Paul’s delegates’ large wins in other states either.

The rules had allowed an outsider to win. Therefore, the insiders decided the rules needed to be changed. Well, what do you know! Because of the new rules for allotting delegates to the winner on caucus night, the insiders are now fretting that the winning of the state’s delegates by another party outsider — Donald Trump — may be unstoppable in 2016.

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

In 2011 President Barack Obama directed, without any congressional authorization, a US military attack on Libya that was marketed as “humanitarian intervention.” As RPI Director Daniel McAdams observed in August of 2014, the result of military action by the US and other governments against Libya was destruction, violence, and chaos, not the promised “democracy, prosperity, and freedom from tyranny.”

Glenn Greenwald warns in a new Intercept article that the US government is planning another go at attacking Libya. Writes Greenwald:

Just as there was no Al Qaeda or ISIS to attack in Iraq until the U.S. bombed its government, there was no ISIS in Libya until NATO bombed its. Now the U.S. is about to seize on the effects of its own bombing campaign in Libya to justify an entirely new bombing campaign in that same country.

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