Eight years ago this month I commented that “I would not be surprised to see the US government legalize marijuana within the next five years.” That conclusion came upon my consideration of the then 64 percent nationwide support for legalization among Americans who had been recently polled by Gallup, plus — for the first time — majority support among Republicans.
Tag: Republican Party
The Republic of Texas, Part Two
Texas was its own nation independent of any other for ten years between gaining its independence from Mexico in 1836 and joining the United States in 1846. Nearly 180 years later, could Texas be on the verge of becoming an independent republic again?
Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) is quite unpopular at his state’s Republican Party convention this weekend. First, many convention-goers threw out lanyards promoting the Texas senator that were connected to convention name badges and replaced them with alternative lanyards. Then, the state party’s platform committee unanimously voted to condemn Cornyn and the nine other Republican United States Senate members who have been working with Democrats in the Senate to enact laws seeking to violate Second Amendment and Due Process rights through the advancing of “red flag” laws and other new gun control measures.
The Republican Party of Texas executive committee has taken a heroic action that could serve as an example for Republican and Democratic parties across America. It has adopted, by a 54 to 4 vote, a resolution clearly and emphatically demanding that Texas Governor Greg Abbott immediately end all the liberty-repressing measures that, over the last six months while the state legislature has been in recess, Abbott has imposed unilaterally in the name of countering coronavirus.
The rebuke and demand of the resolution are particularly strong given that they come from Abbott’s own party.
In 2016, former Massachusetts Governor Bill Weld received the Libertarian Party’s vice-presidential nomination. This year, having returned to the Republican Party, Weld is challenging President Donald Trump for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination.
Many people would assume that Weld would be criticizing Trump for ordering this week’s killing in Iraq of Iranian General Qassim Suleimani. This assumption would make sense given the libertarian position favoring nonintervention overseas.