Rand Paul just wrecked his 16 campaign: Watch his awful Eric Garner answer

Journalists and comedians want an entertaining 2016 presidential race, and Im sympathetic. I know people are going to prop up some folks I cant get behind, but its all fair. Libertarian minded liberals will say nice things about Sen. Rand Paul, and so might independent minded folks like MSNBCs Chris Matthews.

And most days, I think thats great. Rand Paul would be an interesting major candidate in the 2016 Republican primaries. I like some of what he says about criminal justice reform. Im glad he wants to reach out to, rather than disenfranchise, African Americans. Hes not the worst potential GOP candidate.

But Pauls response to Chris Matthews Wednesday about the Eric Garner tragedy shows that, for all his lovely words about African Americans and criminal justice excess, hes a standard-issue libertarian whose top issue will always be taxes. Hell always be an anti-tax libertarian first and foremost, before hes a civil rights libertarian.

Appearing on MSNBCs Hardball shortly after a Staten Island grand jury declined to prosecute the cop who choked Eric Garner to death, on suspicion that Garner was selling loose cigarettes, Paul shamed himself, badly:

Well you know I think its hard not to watch that video of him saying I cant breathe, I cant breathe and not be horrified by it. But I think theres something bigger than the individual circumstances. Obviously, the individual circumstances are important. But I think it is also important to know that some politician put a tax of $5.85 on a pack of cigarettes so that driven cigarettes underground by making them so expensive. But then some politician also had to direct the police to say, hey we want you arresting people for selling a loose cigarette. And for someone to die over breaking that law, there really is no excuse for it. But I do blame the politicians. We put our police in a difficult situation with bad laws.

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There is so so much wrong with Pauls answer on Garner. Its a huge part of why he will never be president. What kind of callousness is required to say the bigger issue in Garners death isnt excessive police use of force, or police practice toward African Americans generally, buttaxes? What kind of heart do you have to have to use the Eric Garner tragedy to rail against cigarette taxes?

Beyond that, we dont even know for sure that Garner was selling loose cigarettes at the time he was taken into custody and killed. Also: a lot of folks who sell loose cigarettes buy them cheap, and sell them for more than they paid but also pay taxes on them. Its not always a tax dodge. So its not even clear if Paul is right about the tax issue.

But also, even when its a tax dodge: Its really ludicrous to blame cigarette taxes for Eric Garners killing. Try harder, righties. Pauls lame dodge was everywhere within minutes of the grand jurys sad decision.

Im not sure I can think of a case of a cop shooting anyone over selling something without charging/paying taxes, ever, in my lifetime. On the other hand, there is a very real issue of police using excessive force against African Americans cops are 21 times more likely to shoot a black suspect than a white one, and we have the real-life examples of Eric Garner, John Crawford, Tamir Rice, Ezell Ford and Michael Brown, just counting back to August.

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Rand Paul just wrecked his 16 campaign: Watch his awful Eric Garner answer

Paul: I'll fight "caricature" of my foreign policy views in 2016

Senator Rand Paul speaks at a session titled "The Changing Politics of Foreign Policy" during the Wall Street Journal's CEO Council meeting in Washington December 2, 2014. REUTERS

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Kentucky, on Tuesday acknowledged that should he run for president in 2016, his libertarian-leaning views on foreign policy will be easy for his conservative opponents to distort and over-simplify.

"I'm not talking about all or none" when it comes to intervening abroad, Paul said at the Wall Street Journal CEO Council annual meeting in Washington. "That's a caricature, and I will have to fight that, but we'll see what happens."

Conventional wisdom dictates that Paul's more hands-off approach to foreign policy would be a disadvantage in the Republican presidential primaries. Paul, however, said that the branch of the GOP that agrees with him is "not a small movement."

He referenced a Bloomberg/ Des Moines Register poll from October, which showed that 41 percent of Iowa Republican caucus-goers think the U.S. should "pull back current military engagements to be less interventionist in foreign policy, as Rand Paul suggests." The poll found that 45 percent agreed the U.S. should "be quicker to intervene in conflicts overseas, as John McCain suggests."

While he believes in less intervention abroad, Paul said he grew up as a Reagan Republican and holds on to the principles espoused in that era.

"I absolutely support the concept of peace through strength," he said. The senator touted his five-year budget plan that would boost the Defense Department budget will completely eliminating other parts of the federal government.

"If you want a strong defense, fine... but if you're going to run up an $18 billion deficit, you're going to make the country weaker."

2014 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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Paul: I'll fight "caricature" of my foreign policy views in 2016

Defiant, She Advanced: A Libertarian Science Fiction Anthology – Video


Defiant, She Advanced: A Libertarian Science Fiction Anthology
http://igg.me/at/defiant Inspire defiance with a libertarian science fiction anthology led by strong, daring characters. Support our indiegogo and get a copy of some rousing libertarian science...

By: George Donnelly

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Defiant, She Advanced: A Libertarian Science Fiction Anthology - Video

Libertarian Party lashes out at the newly warlike Rand Paul

FILE - In this June 20, 2014 file photo Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky. speaks in Washington. Their party has seized the Senate majority. Now, an ambitious class of Republican senators faces unique challenges, and opportunities, in a GOP-led Senate under ... more >

Some are not happy with Sen. Rand Pauls recent resolution for a declaration of war against the Islamic State. We agree with your father, Ron Paul, who for decades was a lonely yet brave voice in Congress for peace. He was right when he called for getting the U.S. military out of the Middle East. Everyone knows that youre posturing to get the Republican nomination for president in 2016, says Libertarian Party chairman Nicholas Sarwark in an open letter to the Kentucky Republican.

But for this long-shot hope of winning the nomination, you have endorsed a roster of hawkish big government Republicans - from Mitt Romney to Mitch McConnell. And now youre calling for sending our troops back to Iraq, which will be a death sentence for many of them, Mr. Sarwark cautions.

Just how much can your long-shot presidential bid be worth? Is it worth the lives of these young men and women? The Libertarian Party says Absolutely not! While we agree with your view that no funds should be allocated to an illegal war, a policy of non-intervention remains the only just and reasonable approach to dealing with the Middle East - a land halfway around the world where the United States does not belong, Mr. Sarwark says. Your bid for a declaration of war against ISIS is unjustifiable and dangerous. Please withdraw it immediately.

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Libertarian Party lashes out at the newly warlike Rand Paul

State board boots Arnold off Libertarian line for State Senate

ALBANY The state Board of Elections invalidated the Libertarian Party nominating petition of Gia M. Arnold Friday, ending her campaign for 62nd District state senator.

Arnold, now of Lockport, lost the Republican primary to North Tonawanda Mayor Robert G. Ortt, 5,645 to 1,589, but had hoped to survive through the general election by filing independent petitions for the Libertarian line. However, Ortts campaign filed 60 different objections to the legality of the signatures, and they left Arnold with not enough signatures to qualify for the ballot.

Ortt will face Democrat Johnny G. Destino of Niagara Falls in the race for the Senate seat being vacated by George D. Maziarz, R-Newfane. However, Paul Brown of North Tonawanda, business manager for Local 9 of the Plasterers Union, won a write-in primary for the Working Families Party line over Destino, 59-37, so there will be three candidates on the Nov. 4 ballot after all.

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State board boots Arnold off Libertarian line for State Senate

Which Is Worse, a Libertarian or a Humanitarian-Warrior?

by David Swanson November 3, 2014 http://warisacrime.org/content/which-worse-libertarian-or-humanitarian-warrior

Is it worse to put into Congress or the White House someone who wants to end wars and dismantle much of the military but also wants to abolish Social Security and Medicare and the Department of Education and several other departments they have trouble remembering the names of, OR someone who just wants to slightly trim all of those departments around the edges while waging countless wars all over the world in the name of every heretofore imagined human right other than the right not to get blown up with a missile?

Can dismantling the military without investing in diplomacy and aid and cooperative conflict resolution actually avoid wars? Can a country that continues waging wars at every opportunity actually avoid abolishing domestic services? I would hope that everyone would be willing to reject both libertarians and humanitarian-warriors even when it means rejecting both the Republican and the Democratic Parties. I would also hope that each of those parties would begin to recognize the danger they are in and change their ways.

Democrats should consider this: States within the United States are developing better and worse wages, labor standards, environmental standards, healthcare systems, schools, and civil liberties. The Washington Post is advising people on which foreign nations to go to college in for free -- nations that both tax wealth and invest between 0 and 4 percent of the U.S. level in militarism. A federal government that stopped putting a trillion dollars a year into wars and war preparations, with all the accompanying death, trauma, destruction, environmental damage, and loss of liberties, begins to look like a decent tradeoff for a federal government ending lots of other things it does, from its very minimal security net to massive investment in fossil fuels and highways. Of course it's still a horrible tradeoff, especially if you live in one of the more backward states, as I do. But it begins to look like less of a horrible tradeoff, I think, as we come to realize that representative democracy can work at the state and local levels, and the major crises of climate and war can only be solved at the global level, while the national government we have is too big to handle our local needs and is itself the leading opponent of peace and sustainability on earth.

With that in mind, consider a leading face of the Democratic Party: Hillary Clinton. She's openly corrupted by war profiteers. She was too corrupt to investigate Watergate. Wall Street Republicans back her, and she believes in "representing banks." She'd be willing to "obliterate" Iran. She laughed gleefully about killing Gadaffi and bringing Libya into the liberated state of hell it's now in, with violence having spilled into neighboring nations since. She threw her support and her vote behind attacking Iraq in 2003. She is a leading militarist and authoritarian who turned the State Department into a war-making machine pushing weapons and fracking on the world, and she supports the surveillance state. There's a strong feminist argument against her. The pull of superior domestic rhetoric is strong, but not everyone will see a candidate who backed a war that killed a million dark-skinned Iraqis as the anti-racist candidate.

Republicans should consider this: Your star senator, Rand Paul, can be relied on to talk complete sense about the madness of war, right up until people get scared by beheading videos, and then he's in favor of the madness of war, if still so far short of all-out backing of war-on-the-world as to horrify the Washington Post. He has backed cancelling all foreign aid, except for military foreign "aid" up to $5 billion, mostly in free weapons for Israel. He used to favor serious cuts to military spending, but hasn't acted on that and now has John McCain's support as a good "centrist." Hesupports racist policies while hoping not to be seen doing so, and was against the Civil Rights Act before he was for it. He thinks kids should drive 10 miles to find a good school or get educated online.

Everyone should consider this: Candidates like the above two are so horrible, and end up moving ever closer to each other's positions, that the real choice is between them and someone decent. If the choice ever really arises between a libertarian who opposes war (many self-identified libertarians love war and are only against peaceful spending) and a humanitarian warrior with something to offer domestically (many humanitarian warriors don't have much of an upside elsewhere) it could shake up some people's blind partisanship. By why wait? Why not shake it up now? Why not start now investing energy in activism rather than elections, including activism to reform elections and how they are funded? Why not start now voting for candidates we don't have to hold our noses for? Six years into the Obama presidency, we have peace groups -- not all of them, thank goodness -- but we have peace groups putting everything into electing Democrats, after which they plan to oppose advocating for peace, instead backing limited war. It isn't the lesser-evil voting that kills us; it's the lesser-evil thinking that somehow never gets left behind in the voting booth.

David Swanson is an author, activist, journalist, and radio host. He is director of WorldBeyondWar.org and campaign coordinator for RootsAction.org. Swanson's books include War Is A Lie. He blogs at DavidSwanson.org and WarIsACrime.org. He hosts Talk Nation Radio.

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Which Is Worse, a Libertarian or a Humanitarian-Warrior?

NSA Reform Could Pit GOP Hawks Against Partys Libertarian Wing

Efforts to curb the National Security Agencys bulk collection of American phone metadata were dealt a blow with the defeat of the USA Freedom Act on Nov. 18. With a 58-42 vote, the bill failed to attract the 60 votes necessary to clear the Senate filibuster.

With Republicans taking control of Congress in January, privacy advocates are concerned that the vote represented the last chance to enact surveillance reform. Experts say its too close to call whether the new, GOP-controlled Congress will maintain the status quo or look to pass legislation that accomplishes some of the Freedom Acts objectives.

Theres enough uneasiness and opposition to the NSA that the GOP is split over what to do next, said Robert Jervis, a professor of political science and international affairs at Columbia University. Still, theres a broad political coalition thats in favor of surveillance, said Abraham Newman, an associate professor at the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.

Normally hawkish Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, voted for the bill.

Incoming Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., referring to the terrorist group ISIS, said now is the worst time to tie our hands behind our backs and voted against it.

Incoming Senate judiciary chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, voted against the bill. Rand Paul, R-Ky., a front-runner for the GOP 2016 presidential nomination, voted against it because of a provision to extend Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which provides the legal foundation for the data collection. It will expire on June 1 next year if not renewed.

The very likely outcome is that it will be renewed, Newman said, adding that a provision could be attached to another bill in the weeks before the June 1 deadline. Many provisions of the Patriot Act have sunset clauses, but, if you look, very few of them have ever actually sunset. It could be reauthorized through some omnibus legislation.

The USA Freedom Act proposed an end to the indiscriminate collection of American phone metadata and would have installed a privacy watchdog within Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court deliberations.

The USA Freedom Act would have also forced the NSA to reveal how many Americans are inadvertently ensnared in the investigation of foreign suspects and given technology companies the ability to be more transparent on the number of data requests they are forced to comply with.

If passed, the act would have ensured that the NSA still had access to phone metadata while keeping those records in the hands of phone companies. That raised eyebrows from the civil liberties community, with critics pointing to the recent news of Verizons nearly undetectable tracking cookie as proof that the corporate world is hardly a better privacy safeguard than the NSA.

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NSA Reform Could Pit GOP Hawks Against Partys Libertarian Wing

Uncle Dan ponders Obama’s "immigration action" – and the Libertarian position on this … – Video


Uncle Dan ponders Obama #39;s "immigration action" - and the Libertarian position on this ...
The subject of immigration - legal or illegal - is complex. As a libertarian, I do not have a simple answer to this question. In many ways it is like the question of economic trade - I believe...

By: Daniel Sullivan

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Uncle Dan ponders Obama's "immigration action" - and the Libertarian position on this ... - Video

The Libertarians planning to take over New Hampshire

Mr Freeman, 34, hosts a radio show which is syndicated around the country. He is also ran for governor on behalf of the New Hampshire Liberty Party.

The Free State Project was founded more than a decade ago by Jason Sorens, who was studying for a doctorate at Yale at the time.

His dream was to trigger a mass migration of 20,000 libertarians to a state with a small population by early 2016.

The idea was to follow the example of the Mormon migration to Utah in the mid 19th century.

A number of states including Maine,Wyoming, Vermont and Alaska were considered as candidates for the movement before supporters decided on New Hampshire.

The granite state, which has no sales tax or income tax - though property taxes are high - was the overwhelming choice.

We want to create a society where the maximum role of Government is the protection of life, liberty and property, Mr Freeman told the Telegraph.

I like the idea of the natural law of supply and demand. I dont have a problem with laws which say you should not harm anybody else.

But other laws should go.

There are reams and reams of statutes which nobody can get through. I do have a real problem with restrictions on alcohol and drugs.

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The Libertarians planning to take over New Hampshire

Libertarian may have hurt Rick Scott more than Charlie Crist

We're overdue posting Alex Patton's look at Libertarian candidate Adrian Wyllie's effect on the governor's race:

...Further study is warranted, but an initial review of the data indicates Wyllie having a far greater negative effect on Rick Scott with almost no effect on Charlie Crist. However, that is not the end of the story.

There appears to be a strong correlation of increased turnout (at least higher than the statewide turnout increase) in the counties that Wyllie performed best in.

Did Wyllie increase turnout? I am not sure yet, becauseit would take more research and analysis to be able to risk declaring causation.

However, from an initial glance ofone afternoons work, there appears a revisedhypothesis forming:

Wyllie may have took votes from Governor Scott, but Wyllie also brought more new voters to the2014 Florida Gubernatorial Campaign(at least in the countiessurrounding the Tampa Bay Area)...

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Libertarian may have hurt Rick Scott more than Charlie Crist