People say there is too little bipartisanship in Washington, DC. But, when it comes to protecting the United States government’s mass surveillance program, there is plenty of bipartisan action by Democratic and Republican leaders. This was on display Wednesday morning in the opening comments of US House of Representatives Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Doug Collins (R-GA) during a hearing at which the committee debated and voted on the Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement (MORE) Act.
Continue readingNew Pew Research Center poll results indicate Americans’ support for marijuana legalization continues to grow, with support reaching two-thirds among those questioned and maintaining majorities among Democrats, Republicans, and independents. This state of popular opinion, along with marijuana law liberalization continuing to move forward at state and local levels, are among the factors suggesting the time is ripe for legalization on the national level.
However, the United States House of Representatives Judiciary Committee is not moving forward with a clean bill to repeal marijuana prohibition that would garner widespread public support and have a good chance of both passing in the Republican-controlled Senate and receiving President Donald Trump’s signature. Instead, the committee is scheduled to consider on Wednesday legislation that, in addition to national legalization, contains marijuana business subsidies and race-based provisions that likely mean the bill will have zero chance of passing in the Senate or receiving Trump’s support.
Continue readingLast week I wrote about an apparent contradiction between Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) talking up her 16-plus years in the United States Army and her criticizing certain US military interventions overseas in a recent interview at the ABC show The View. Since her criticism of such interventions is at the heart of her presidential campaign, I suggested that it would be helpful for Gabbard to offer an explanation to dispel the apparent contradiction.
Also in her The View interview, Gabbard brought up being a “woman of color” in challenging people saying she is an unwitting asset of the Russian government, as she put it, “working against the interests of our people and our country, the country that I am willing to lay my life down for.” Said Gabbard:
So, if you’re saying it’s not deliberately, then you are implying that I am too stupid and too naïve and lack the intelligence to know what I am doing. That is extremely offensive to me and to every woman of color.
Come again?
Continue readingOver the last few years, Americans entering and leaving the United States encountered US government officials increasingly accessing private information on the travelers’ electronic devices on demand. The situation is an affront to the constitutional restraint on searches contained in the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution.
Continue readingAfter completing six terms in the United States House of Representatives as a Democrat from Georgia, Cynthia McKinney was the 2008 Green Party nominee for president of the United States. In a Friday letter, McKinney announced her endorsement of Adam Kokesh for the 2020 Libertarian Party presidential nomination.
Continue readingRep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) has presented her opposition to certain United States military interventions overseas as a major issue, and arguably as the primary issue, in her presidential campaign. Yet, there is an apparent contradiction between the way she disparages certain US military interventions overseas and the way she talks up her own past and current employment in the US military.
Continue readingTuesday morning, President Donald Trump, who has the unilateral power to send the United States military to bomb and invade other countries, as several of his predecessors have done, stated at Twitter that he is ready to send the US military to Mexico to defeat drug cartels.
Continue readingIn April, I wrote that it looked like Future of Freedom Foundation President Jacob Hornberger may run for president of the United States. As I noted then, many people familiar with the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity (RPI) have read some of Hornberger’s articles at the RPI website or watched one of his speeches at an RPI event. Here is an update: On Saturday, Hornberger announced he is seeking the Libertarian Party’s presidential nomination.
Continue readingReading a Wednesday article by Kyle Jaeger at Marijuana Moment, a quote from a Wisconsin state Assembly member who is a sponsor of a marijuana decriminalization bill struck me. Rep. David Crowley states at Twitter that the legislation “should have been passed years ago – but thanks to the inaction of our legislature, [Wisconsin] is now an island of antiquated drug policy in a sea of decriminalization.”
The quote brought to mind the years 2001 and 2002 when I was in Wisconsin to help Ed Thompson with his governor campaign. Thompson, who ran as a Libertarian, made the legalization of medical marijuana a key campaign issue and supported recreational marijuana legalization as well.
Protecting Syrian oil that accounts for just 0.2 percent of world reserves is not the reason United States troops are staying in Syria, argues retired Army Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson in a new interview at MSNBC. Instead, says Wilkerson, who was chief of staff for Secretary of State Colin Powell in the George W. Bush administration, the offered oil protection rationale is a “manufactured reason.”
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