Adam Dick

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.

Norman Singleton, who worked for years as the legislative director for former Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX), provided a very revealing account on Tuesday of the terrible way the PATRIOT Act was moved quickly to passage by a huge majority of votes in the US House of Representatives and Senate in October of 2001. Singleton, who is currently the vice president of policy at the Campaign for Liberty, made the comments as a panelist in a Washington, DC congressional briefing regarding the Surveillance State Repeal Act (HR 1466) introduced this week by Reps. Mark Pocan (D-WI) and Thomas Massie (R-KY).

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

A week after a joint session of the United States Congress gave repeated standing ovations to Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as he scaremongered Americans regarding Iran and as legislation to impose yet more sanctions on Iran is being pushed in the Congress, it is a good time to revisit then-Rep. Ron Paul’s August 1, 2012 speeches on the US House of Representatives floor in opposition to US sanctions on Iran. Paul’s observations, including that sanctions are “one more step to another war that we don’t need,” are as true now as they were nearly three years ago.

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

Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Tuesday speech to the United States Congress is a continuation of his nearly 20 years of scaremongering the US government to encourage both US intervention in the Middle East and US military aid for Israel says Ron Paul Institute Academic Board Member Hillary Mann Leverett in a new CCTV interview. Instead of falling for the scare tactics again, Mann Leverett suggests the US move toward a policy approach that would include pulling back from repeated military invasions and occupations designed to achieve dominance in the Middle East.

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

According to Pew Research Center poll results released Friday, 63 percent of Millennial Generation Republicans support marijuana legalization. On this issue these Republicans born between 1981 and 1996 have more in common with Democrats than with Republicans generally. And these young Republicans are definitely at odds with the majority of Republicans in the United States House of Representatives who continue to vote “no” on rollbacks of the US government’s war on marijuana.

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