Mitt Romney has selected Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) as his running mate with great fanfare among conservatives. Paul Ryan, someone with some fiscal sanity on a major political ticket who can offer an alternative to President Obama and his big government, big spending ways.
Well, not so fast. Not too long after the news of Ryan being selected as Romney’s running mate hit the wires, this little gem was recovered from the memory hole:
Judge Andrew Napolitano wrote an excellent article in yesterday’s Washington Post entitled: Killing vs. Squealing. The judge laments that the Republicans in the congress aren’t so much concerned about the fact that President Obama is acting as a third-world warlord thug killing individuals he picks out from a deck of “baseball cards” in Yemen, Pakistan, and elsewhere (foreigners and Americans alike) but the fact that someone, somewhere in the government has leaked this information to the press and the American public. Sen. John McCain and others apparently believe the Obama administration has leaked these facts to the press to show how effectively he is killing the “terrorists” abroad to preempt any attacks from the Romney campaign that Obama is somehow weak on “national security.”
Just about every paragraph in the judge’s article is quotable (seriously, read the whole thing) but I believe he summed up just where the “loyal opposition” is with regard to the president’s arguably impeachable activities best here:
Which is ultimately more harmful to freedom: that the president on his own kills, maims and destroys, or that some people in our own government who have greater fidelity to the Constitution than loyalty to an out-of-control presidency – and who are protected by law when they reveal government crimes – tell us what the president is up to? What kind of politicians complain about truthful revelations of unconstitutional behavior by the government, but not about death and destruction, and, let’s face it, criminal abuse of power by the president? Only cynical, power-hungry politicians who have disdain for the Constitution they have sworn to uphold could do this with a straight face.
[…]
How base our culture has become when the hunt for truth-tellers is more compelling than the cessation of unlawful government killing.
Yeah, the funny thing is, just four years ago when Bush was president, our culture (i.e. the MSM, Hollywood, academia, the anti-war movement, etc.) was very concerned about government secrecy, civil liberties violations, torture, secret prisons, getting out of Iraq & Afghanistan, etc. but now that their guy is in the Whitehouse, these very valid concerns seemingly have fallen by the wayside. If people in the opposition party doesn’t call the president out on this, don’t think for a moment that the president’s allies will. Something tells me that in the event Romney wins in November, all of these concerns will suddenly be back in vogue but not until then.
I touched on this on yesterday’s post but I think the Obama administration’s redefinition of the word “combatant” as it relates to his secret kill list deserves more exposure. The following comes from a New York Times article written by Jo Becker and Scott Shane entitled: Secret ‘Kill List’ Proves a Test of Obama’s Principles and Will. (The part I’m quoting from appears on this page)
[emphasis mine]
Mr. Obama embraced a disputed method for counting civilian casualties that did little to box him in. It in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants, according to several administration officials, unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent.
Counterterrorism officials insist this approach is one of simple logic: people in an area of known terrorist activity, or found with a top Qaeda operative, are probably up to no good.[…]
[…]
This counting method may partly explain the official claims of extraordinarily low collateral deaths. In a speech last year Mr. Brennan, Mr. Obama’s trusted adviser, said that not a single noncombatant had been killed in a year of strikes. And in a recent interview, a senior administration official said that the number of civilians killed in drone strikes in Pakistan under Mr. Obama was in the “single digits” — and that independent counts of scores or hundreds of civilian deaths unwittingly draw on false propaganda claims by militants.
Brilliant! If the statistics show that the drone attacks are killing too many civilians, redefine the term “combatant” and the number of civilians killed will show up in the single digits. George Orwell would be proud.
There it is again. That damned conspiracy theory about Barack Obama being born not in Hawaii but Kenya. An honest question for you birthers out there: even assuming that everything you believe about the birthplace of Barack Obama is true, do you really think that even if you could prove it 100% that people who would otherwise support him/undecided would choose not to or would be declared ineligible to serve as president by some court, perhaps SCOTUS?
IMO the answers to those questions are no and probably not. If the voters are not concerned enough to vote him out (or even call for his impeachment) based on his other, much more damaging assaults on the Constitution, I seriously doubt these same people are going to be upset about Obama’s audacity to be born to an American mother outside the country. As far as violating his oath to defend the Constitution goes, this would be quite a minor assault.
So if the birther issue doesn’t benefit Obama’s opponents, who would it benefit? President Obama and the Democrat Party. The Obama campaign has already released an ad critical of Mitt Romney and his ties to Donald Trump (below).
I hear people complain that Obama wasn’t properly vetted in 2008 (and to a certain extent I agree). The media didn’t concentrate enough on the birth certificate, his time hanging out with Marxists in college, his unwillingness to release his college transcripts, his association with Jeremiah Wright. Some of these things are reasonable questions but are distractions to the issues of the greatest importance.
It may be true that we don’t know a whole lot about Obama’s biography or what made him the person he is relative to past presidents but we have had four years to evaluate his job performance as president. In the final analysis, isn’t that all that really matters?
With Congressman Ron Paul’s third presidential run and career coming to an end, what will become of his rEVOLution he inspired? Prior to the 2012 campaign, some suggested that former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson would be the “next” Ron Paul but with Johnson running as the Libertarian Party nominee after being mistreated by the GOP establishment in the primaries, it appears to me that that bridge has been burned and will likely never be rebuilt. Johnson’s activities in furthering the liberty movement will be done outside the Republican Party.
The new heir apparent to lead the rEVOLution appears to be the congressman’s son Sen. Rand Paul. Rand Paul has been one of a handful of voices of reason in the senate voting against renewing the Patriot Act, the NDAA*, standing up to the TSA, and speaking out against President Obama’s unconstitutional “kinetic military actions” in Libya and elsewhere to name a few. For the most part**, Sen. Rand Paul has been a consistent champion of liberty much like his father. Speculation abounds that Sen. Paul will make a presidential run of his own in 2016.
The rEVOLution and the greater liberty movement must be much larger than one person***, however. According to Brian Doherty, author of his new book Ron Paul’s rEVOLution: The Man and the Movement He Inspired, Paul’s movement will continue long after Paul himself has left the political stage. Doherty summarizes the thesis of his book in the Cato forum (video below); David Boaz and Sen. Rand Paul also offer their thoughts on the future of the liberty movement after Ron Paul.
