Adam Dick

A February 2012 memorandum of understanding between the United States Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) lays out a process pursuant to which the VA has been regularly sending to the FBI mental health information about VA patients. So reports Patrick Howley at the Daily Caller on Tuesday. The mental health information transferred is intended to aid the FBI in adding individuals to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) list of individuals restricted from owning or possessing guns.

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

Speaking Monday on the Alan Colmes Show, Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity Chairman Ron Paul discussed the danger the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) poses to peace.

Paul explains his reasoning for shutting down NATO in response to a query from Colmes:

Colmes: You also believe NATO should be shut down at this point, correct?

Paul: Yeah, NATO for me is one of those entangling alliances that our Founders suggested we not get involved in. And, you know, Robert Taft was from the Old Right, which was more libertarian. Under the circumstances following World War II, he advised us not to get into NATO because it would invite more problems. And I think NATO is part of the reason we go into Libya, into Syria, now in Ukraine. And that’s all under NATO, It’s really not checking in with the American people whether it’s a good idea or not. I think that NATO’s an entangling alliance that we would be better off without.

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

Under a new government policy announced by Australia Prime Minister Tony Abbott, many Australian families are respectively facing the denial of thousands of dollars in welfare and tax benefits over a year’s time because their children have not received all the vaccinations listed on a government schedule. Meanwhile, in America, recently developed pro-mandate momentum threatens to end the most commonly used exemptions families claim to exempt children from mandatory vaccinations.

The new Australian policy cuts welfare and tax benefits if parents rely on a conscientious objection — often referred to as a philosophical objection in America — to deviate from the government’s vaccination schedule. While the conscientious objection option has been available to parents generally, the religious and medical exemptions that may still be asserted under the new policy are only available to a subset of families. Indeed, CBC News quotes the Australia social services minister predicting that very few families will be able to obtain an exemption under the new policy:

Social Services Minister Scott Morrison said he only expected a very small number of families to be exempted from the new policy.

Morrison said parents seeking a religious exception would need to be registered with their church or similar organization.

‘That’s the only basis upon which you can have a religious exception, and there are no mainstream religions that have such objections registered so this would apply to a very, very small proportion of people,’ he said.

‘It’d be lucky to be in the thousands, if that.’

The new Australia policy is an example of the danger of “do-good” government programs, such as welfare, morphing into a means for punishing and prohibiting the exercise of individual rights. John Odermatt passionately addresses this concern about the new Australia policy at the Lions of Liberty, stating:

The law blatantly targets the poorest in society and gives the rich a pass. I don’t see how any rational person could see this as anything else than an attack on the poor. The law is immoral because it uses coercion to influence behavior. Lawmakers and the people who support this travesty believe that individuals do not own their bodies. To endorse this law is to endorse outright tyranny.

Once the new policy has been implemented for a while to limit some families’ welfare and tax benefits, the concerns Odermatt expresses about the disparity of the program’s impact will likely be used by mandate advocates to argue that mandatory vaccinations be made the policy for everyone.

In America that would be termed “closing a loophole” or “expanding a successful pilot program.”

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

When President George W. Bush announced the Global War on Terrorism in 2001 he did not have to start his war from scratch. Instead, the development of the United States government’s war on drugs that President Richard Nixon announced forty years earlier facilitated much of Bush’s new war. Two revelations this week provide new examples of the linkage between the two wars.

First, Brad Heath reported Wednesday at USA Today that from 1992 through 2013 the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) collected calling records of “virtually all” phone calls from America to a long list of countries. At the list’s peak size, bulk collection was undertaken on calls between the US and over 100 countries. Countries that the article notes were on the list at “one time or another” include most countries in South America, Central America, and the Caribbean, as well as Canada, Mexico, Italy, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, and other countries in Europe, Asia, and Africa.

Heath describes the DEA program as “a model for the massive phone surveillance system the NSA launched to identify terrorists after the Sept. 11 attacks.”

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

Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA), in an interview Tuesday with the Daily Hampshire Gazette, revealed his plan to introduce, along with Rep. Walter Jones (R-NC), a privileged resolution in the US House of Representatives that will require a prompt vote regarding the war on the Islamic State (ISIS) in Iraq and Syria. While Congress has voted to spend some funds on part of the war, there has been no floor vote in the House or Senate regarding authorization of the war since President Barack Obama started bombings in August. The resolution would be introduced after the April 13 return of House members from recess to Washington, DC.

Gazette writer Laurie Loisel reports on McGovern’s plans disclosed in the interview:

‘We ought to have a full debate and we ought to have a full discussion before we enter another war,’ he said. ‘The authorization to go to war in Afghanistan was in 2001 and in Iraq shortly thereafter. It’s time to get a new authorization.’

McGovern said he intends to work with U.S. Rep. Walter Jones, a Republican from North Carolina, to introduce a so-called ‘privileged resolution,’ a mechanism that allows members of congress to force an issue to the floor of the House in an expedited fashion, taking precedence over other matters. This, McGovern hopes, would force a discussion on the issue of U.S. military escalation in Iraq.

‘It would be saying that our rights collectively as a House are being denied,’ he said. ‘I want Congress to do its job.’

Loisel’s full article is definitely worth a read for McGovern’s insightful comments regarding the ongoing war. McGovern says he believes that the US, in the ISIS War, is “getting sucked deeper and deeper into a quagmire where there’s no end.” He also suggests that the US is fighting the war in a manner that indicates it has not learned the lesson from history, “that we’ve got to be careful about going after bad guys by putting bad guys in power to replace them.” Further, McGovern notes how the US military action in Iraq and Syria is actually benefiting ISIS and even desired by ISIS: “I think ISIS desperately wants us to get more involved because then they can turn this into a battle against the West.”

McGovern explains in the interview that the reason he and Jones need to introduce the privileged resolution is because Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) has failed to schedule an ISIS War vote on the House floor. The Gazette article reports:

McGovern said when he tried to bring the matter out for discussion on the House floor last fall, congressional leadership, including House Speaker John Boehner, said the debate should wait until a new Congress convened in the new year.

Well, the new Congress convened nearly three months ago. What’s the holdup?

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