Adam Dick

Indiana Governor Mike Pence on Thursday issued an executive order (EO 15-05) declaring a “public health disaster emergency” in Scott County in southeastern Indiana due to an epidemic of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in the county. The extraordinary measures allowed under the executive order include permitting the Scott County Board of Health to seek the state government’s permission to design and administer a short-term needle exchange program for the sole purpose of suppressing the HIV epidemic in Scott County.

The Republican governor’s executive order further says that all 79 HIV cases the Indiana State Department of Health has confirmed in Scott County since December “directly relate to intravenous drug use.” According to the executive order, no more than five confirmed HIV cases, irrespective of how transmitted, are expected yearly in the county.

If you are in one of Indiana’s 91 other counties and wish to access new, clean needles to protect yourself from infection, tough. (Less than half of one percent of Indiana residents live in Scott County.) Yet, people outside Scott County will be no less dead or debilitated because of infections they receive from using old, dirty needles.

Pence has a war on drugs to fight, and wars have casualties.

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

The media are abuzz with chatter about the “early announcement” by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) of his candidacy for United States president. Back on March 12, 2007, Ron Paul, then a Republican US House Member from Texas, announced his entry into the 2008 presidential race in an in-depth C-SPAN Washington Journal interview.

On February 19, 2007 Paul had announced the formation of his presidential campaign exploratory committee, with the bold declaration that “I reject the notion that we need a president to run our lives, plan the economy, or police the world.”

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

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) provided some refreshing counterweight to the war promoting statements of the United States House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee chairman and ranking member at the committee’s Ukraine hearing on Wednesday with sole witness Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland. Rohrabacher, who chairs the committee’s subcommittee with Ukraine jurisdiction — the Subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia, and Emerging Threats — begins his exchange with Nuland by challenging the “black and white alternatives” being discussed at the hearing. Rohrabacher proceeds to warn that the US having a goal “to basically defeat and humiliate Russia” instead of “to do what is right by Ukraine and bring peace to Ukraine” will mean that “the people of Ukraine will continue to suffer and suffer and suffer.”

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

Texas State Rep. David Simpson (R-Longview) introduced a bill, HB 2165, on Monday that he says is intended to remove marijuana offenses entirely from Texas state law and replace them with nothing. Simpson, in a KETK-TV story, is quoted explaining that he is proposing with his legislation that marijuana “be regulated like tomatoes, jalapeños or coffee.” If Simpson’s bill is enacted, Texas would have the least government controls on marijuana of any state in America.

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

Judge Andrew Napolitano provides a brief and excellent introduction to the US government’s mass spying program in a new video monologue this week at Fox News. In less than a minute and a half, Napolitano explains that the mass spying program of the National Security Agency (NSA) and other US agencies is a reincarnation, with a huge technological boost, of Britain’s use of general warrants in colonial America. Those despised general warrants helped drive Americans to fight for independence. After the war, Americans then demanded the protection of the Fourth Amendment in the US Constitution to ensure that such arbitrary and unjust government actions would not occur again.

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