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I’ve heard Dr. Paul also say that he doesn’t belive in endorsements; that people shouldn’t vote a certain way because a celebrity or another politician says to; that people should do some research and vote for the candidate who truly represents their best interests.

Imagine if this happened if GW Bush was still running things.

We would have heard wailing and gnashing of teeth while Libya was bombed. “He didn’t even go to Congress for approval,” roared the anti-Bush press. “Is the comical Omar/Moahhmar Gaddafi/Khadafy/Quaadhaffey really a threat to global well being and security?” asks the wailing reporters.

And then once the attack in Libya began.... “Is this blowback for our bombing Libya?” “Did we create a vacuum in Libya which al-Qaeda has now stepped into?”

I know that Libya was Iraq on a smaller scale, but the press has been rather easy on Obama on this one as compared to Bush.

Remember the press rule:

When liberals start wars, its okay.

I can only imagine the motivation of the anti-war crowd at the ballot box this November. If Obama loses their support, his vote totals will be affected. The media is hoping that they aren’t paying attention, but I don’t think that people are as dumb as the media thinks they are.

It is a rather strange situation we all find ourselves in here with Lance Armstrong.

I think a lot of people thought he must be clean because we believed in the testing. No one is tested more than him in any sport, we thought. A little research into this area shows that most cyclists are on something, worse yet, they know how to beat the tests. The only ones who test positive are the ones who mess up or don’t know what they are doing, or they put their trust in a doctor who messes up or doesn’t know what they are doing.

So the tests mean nothing. However, how many of us are taught to believe in physical evidence over eyewitness testimony. People forget things, lose details, make stuff up and convince themselves they remember it right. Physical evidence is king. And yet, due to the tests not working, where is the physical evidence? It was needles, sneaked out of sight inside of Coca Cola cans, and other hideaways, to be disposed of, never to see the light of day again.

Some of us object to the lack of due process, the lack of an open courtroom, the lack of cross examination. And these people are right. Even the worst criminal should have his day in court. However, as Judge Sparks said when he turned down Lance’s motion to stop USADA, this is the process Lance signed up for when he became a cyclist. Let this be a warning to all of those who get involved in the sport. Know what you are getting into when you sign up. This is how WADA operates, and cycling is a WADA sport. Much like a young person who unknowingly signs his life away when he gets that first credit card, or that musician who signs his royalties and publishing away when he signs that first record deal, you must be aware of what you could be getting yourself into.

As for the fact that most contenders were cheating and therefore everyone was guilty, or the playing field was level....I am by no means a biologist so I have no idea whether or not the field was truly level. And furthermore, the people demand clean champions. The argument that everyone is doing it isn’t an argument — “if everyone was robbing a bank,” “if everyone was jumping off a bridge,” etc.

I don’t feel completely cheated over what I saw on TV the past 10 or so years. It is a fun sport and very entertaining to watch. With or without the drugs it is amazing to watch these guys do what they do. However, I do think that it doesn’t sit right with people that they watch something amazing and then have to wait years after the fact for investigators to research whether or not what we saw was real or not. The testing must get better and must become relevant again. It will be hard for people to believe what they see until testing improves to an acceptable level.

Until that happens, the sport will be doing itself a favor if it ejects all of those riders, riders turned directors, and directors who either encouraged cheating, or was faced with the decision to cheat or not and chose cheating. No matter how remorseful they might be of their past mistakes, until testing rises to an acceptable level of quality, we simply cannot risk allowing these ex-liars to continue in the sport on the off chance that they may be now telling the truth. The sad part of all of this is that it seems to be a USA based team, Garmin, that has become a haven for all of these past cheaters.

Thanks for checking up on this. When do we plan to get rid of the other one?

I don’t know what you mean by the “everyone” remark.

It is simple.

You said, "Yes, everyone says his (Warren) was the greatest libertarian court." Since I disagree, I am no longer included in the term "everyone." Which is cool.

"The left/libertarians loved the libertarian court though, famed libertarian Noam Chomsky probably did as well.

When you say stuff like this I wonder if I am being punked. Chomsky has come up with stuff to describe what it is he thinks and has come up with terms like "libertarian socialist" which in my opinion sounds like "tall midget."

As long as we are talking about Supreme Court decisions, we could discuss Chomsky's reaction to Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010), which Chomsky opposed, calling it a corporate takeover of U.S. Democracy. A libertarian would respond as Congressman Paul did on the recent Tonight Show interview, where he agreed with the decision, because companies and groups like SuperPACs are essentially people who have a right to free speech, and that if government can restrict that, then they could also restrict the media, etc.

In addition, a libertarian would say that the reason why such money is going into politics in the first place is because the federal government has become a bloated spigot from which companies and others work to become well connected so they can get rich of the backs of little people like us. Turn off the spigot, shrink the bloated thing, and the money getting thrown into campaigns gets put into more productive areas. As long as this country has more Orren Boyles than it has Henry Reardens, this country is in trouble.

I sure hope you are getting something out of this discussion. Or perhaps, do you want to explain in great detail for me next time how Stalin was a libertarian? Or perhaps Alexander Hamilton? or Thomas Hobbes or Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli??

I am happy to learn that I am no longer included in the meaning of the term “everyone.”

Although, how many of the courts were truly libertarian? Since Marshall, they have all been about building up big government at the expense of everything else, so perhaps you could be right.

But that is like having the distinction as the world’s tallest midget. Which, I think, is a musician named Dewey Cox.

If anyone wants to know my opinion on Cato, its simple. It is inside the Beltway and it has been corrupted by power like everything else. It all went downhill when they purged Rothbard.

Therefore, I do not choose a side in the Crane/Koch battle because I want them both to lose.

I personally don’t care about the issue of prayer in public schools. I feel that if someone subjects their child to a school run by big government, they are going to get what they get. It is all pretty much soiled in my opinion. If someone sees the idea of prayer in public schools being struck down as libertarian, they should take it with a grain of salt because the idea of public schools is anti-libertarian in the first place. If people want to educate their children properly, then they belong at home or at a religious or private school that parents can trust. And there shouldn’t be school taxes.

Upholding civil liberties claims against the government is a good thing. Every blind judge can find a nut once in a while. For example, all of the left-wing justices voting in the recent Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church v. EEOC, a unanimous decision. Good grief, Kagan and Alito even wrote a joint concurring opinion.

The reason why upholding civil liberties claims against the government is a good thing is that it is wrong for a powerful government to run your life. I shouldn’t have to go into too much detail on that, but essentially, freedom means freedom, and if your natural rights come from God then man doesn’t have the authority to take them away. But a court that upholds those rights from time to time isn’t necessarily a libertarian court, any more than Kagan is a right wing religious conservative for supporting Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church.

Once again, you support my blind squirrel theory with Warren’s support of relocation camps during WWII. Big government messing up the lives of Japanese Americans. You might agree with Michelle Malkin that it was necessary, but it is not something a libertarian would do. Just as supporting Roe/Doe is not something a libertarian would do.

The “impeach” effort in 1956 was perhaps due to Warren’s recent role in Brown v. Board of Education. Once again, a central government sets policy for the states (although I think that with public education, you takes your chances when it comes to big government pushing people around). Did they have the power to do so? No more so than the federal government that forced policy on the states as they did with the Fugitive Slave Act, or Dred Scott v. Sanford or Plessy v. Ferguson.

Plessy, interestingly enough, was brought forth by private companies, specifically train companies, who were trying to get rid of a Louisiana law that harmed their ability to do business. They were specifically required to carry at least four train cars, two for white and two for black (one smoking and one non-smoking each). Train companies couldn’t afford to run 4 cars on every train, they preferred to run as many cars as there were tickets sold. Big government Supreme Court supported Big Government Louisiana who were jerking around people and private companies. If the trains didn’t have to run under regulations they didn’t want, they would have integrated their trains and then, there is another private solution a problem where some feel only government can solve problems.

Warren being compared to Marshall is a laugh, and another sign that Warren wasn’t nearly as libertarian as everyone says. Thanks to Marshall, most people think that only the Supreme Court can decree that things are unconstitutional. A read of the Constitution and the 9th and 10th amendments shows this to not be the case. Certainly the Supreme Court can do it, but the authority does not reside with them alone. If it did, then Wisconsin wouldn’t have been able to fight the Fugitive Slave Act.

Could you provide some cases which would support your theory? Saying “described as such” doesn’t make your case. Who describes it as such? What basis do they have in saying so?

I’ll cite something. Roe v. Wade and its companion case, Doe v. Bolton, transferred the question of whether or not abortion was murder or not from the states to decide to the federal government, supercedeing the authority of the states in favor of a massive centralized power.

It is likely that as a conservative, you would, for example, not see a massive central government that uses its power to do what, in your mind, would be good as an intrusion. Therefore, if the massive centralized government used its power in matters of authority where it constitutionally doesn’t belong, for example, regulating marriage or abortion, you wouldn’t see it as a problem. However, when the opposite happens, you would see it as intrusion. Likewise, a court which makes abortion legal no matter how it does this is probably seen by you as libertarian, when it is in fact the complete opposite of libertarianism.

The fact of the matter is that there are four federal crimes mentioned in the constitution. Piracy, treason, counterfiting, and slaveholding. Everything else should be left to the states to handle under the 10th amendment, including murder. If there is a similar federal crime, it is simply overlap and redundant. Abortion should be a state crime. The remedy for the big government anti-libertarian Roe v. Wade / Doe v. Bolton would be for state governments to nullify the decision as unconstitutional and to implement state laws which consider abortion as murder.

I’ll cite you an example of the remedy. In the 1850s, Wisconsin was a free state where slaveholding was illegal, even though the federal law (which supercedes state law, right?) made slaveholding legal. Consequently the Underground Railroad brought many escaping slaves to the state of Wisconsin. At the time, there was a federal law known as the Fugitive Slave Act. The act stated that escaped slaves would be rounded up by the state where they escaped to and sent back to their owners. The act subsidized slaveholding, because in theory, the cost of rounding up escaped slaves and buying new ones would eventually cost more than the cost of employing workers, which would end the instution of slavery peacefully and without a War Between the States or hundreds of thousands dead. Wisconsin decided to have nothing to do with the Fugitive Slave Act, nullifying it and declaring that any federal authorities who apprehended escaped slaves in their state would be charged with kidnapping. Illinois, home of Lincoln, on the other hand, not only complied with the Act but decided that any free blacks who entered Illinois would be apprehended, taken to Kentucky, and sold into slavery.

That was a long way to get to it but the point is that any decision that centralizes authority cannot be described as libertarian. The most famous decision of the Warren court is anti-libertarian. I guess I’m confused by your post. Could you elaborate?

I recently heard Levin on the radio and he said something about Ron Paul being an “Articles of Confederation guy.”

I know that Levin fancies himself as a historian, but any historian who said something like that would be out of the historian business very, very quickly.

Anyone who has studied the complaints about the Articles and the subsequent Constitutional Convention knows that one of Madison’s complaints about the current system (under the Articles) was that each state had its own currency, and there was no way for the national government to handle interstate transactions. For example, Rhode Island was printing money out of thin air and was attempting to pay its debts with it to out-of-state creditors.

If anyone knows anything at all about Dr. Paul, it is that he is a sound money guy who would be against the system in place prior to the Constitution I just described.

For more info on Madison and the Constitution debates, see the new biography on Madison by Dr. Kevin R.C. Gutzman (a real historian), whose other books include “The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Constitution” and “Who Killed the Constitition? The Fate of American Liberty from World War I to Barack Obama” (Dr. Tom Woods is a co-author on that one). Dr. Gutzman has also written for National Review and Human Events and other publications.

In other words, I think its possible for Levin to be wrong.

Most of the time, when I hear him talk, I like to imagine Paul Giamatti as “Pig Vomit” in the Howard Stern movie. Maybe its just the sound of his voice or the way he talks. I don’t know. As a result, I’ve never really taken him seriously anyway.

Its a simple idea.

It is more powerful for someone to choose to do right instead of forcing them to do right by a rule.

If someone has the liberty to do whatever they want with their bodies, and instead chooses to live by a Christian code according to Corinthians which you quoted, than that choice has power. It is an expression of free will.

If, however, a powerful force such as the government forces someone to live a certain way, whether they force people to do right or do wrong, there is no free will. There is tyranny. Even if a government forced everyone to live by a Christian code according to Corinthians which you quoted, the choice has no power. There is no free will.

It comes down to this point. Is free will a God given right? And if it is, then isn’t it immoral for government or anyone else to take away that right from people?

Thank you for bringing this to our attention.

What do we need to do in order to make the government more massive and all-encompassing so that people like Mr. Thiel can no longer spend their own money however they want? After all, we cannot have anyone going around inventing something people need, making billions off their own genius, and then spending that money in support of their own self-interest. It is bad enough that the government allows Mr. Thiel to keep any of this money in the first place, especially if the guy is going to go around doing stuff like this.

Or let’s put it another way. Here’s a guy supporting someone I don’t like! Let’s throw rocks at him!

My theory is that Paul doesn’t attack Romney because he sees it as a waste of time. The same could be said about me having a conversation with you. Good day sir. I said good day!

While it is true that Paul has more to spend than Gingrich or Santorum, I guess by "unlimited" I was comparing the amount he has to spend to the amount someone like, Obama, or Romney, has rolling in from Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, or Bank of America.

Obama
Romney
Paul
Santorum
Gingrich

It is interesting to see which company's employees give to which candidate. Romney has all the big Wall Street banks. Santorum has health insurance companies. Gingrich has an ethanol company (subsidies?), and Paul has the members of the U.S. military.

As a conservative who supports property rights, I would assume that you believe that Peter Thiel has the right to use his money however he wants to use it. He has chosen his candidate the same as you or I have, and he has chosen to support that candidate. I don't really see anything wrong with that.

Then explain why their wive’s dine together and they both chat on the phone daily

People aren't allowed to be friends? I seem to recall Justices Ginsburg and Scalia being friends even though they are usually polar opposites. I don't see that as relevant. why RuPaul is spending money on attack ads against Rick and Newt in states he isn’t even campaigning in

I didn't know RuPaul the transvestite was running for President. But if you are just coming up with a juvenile name to call someone, then I'm not aware of any state that Paul isn't campaigning in. Perhaps he didn't spend so much money in Florida because it cost too much and the money is better used elsewhere. But he has several campaign stops in Michigan and he is running the ads here. As to the reason why, I think I gave a pretty decent one. Santorum voters are easier to get and more likely to come over than Romney voters.

Rand said that it would be a “honor” to be Milts VP?

Isn't this pretty much what anyone would say? As you would say, "Come on."

Paul and Romney have one big thing in common. They both hate conservatives. Paul is an absolute fraud and he has just been exposed as such.

Hate is a strong word. But if conservatives have given us the wasteful spending of the first six years of Bush, the big-government-can-spy-on-whomever-it-wants Patriot Act, and has helped Obama pass NDAA and other such Big Brother stuff, and has turned a blind eye while Obama kills whomever he wants with Predator drones, without so much as a hearing, who support the Fed's enabling of trillions of dollars of debt on the backs of future generations in the name of "stimulus," then sure, I guess then conservatives aren't Paul's cup of tea. If conservatives are small government supporters who want to shrink the debt, the federal budget, and to get its dead weight off the shoulders of the American people, then I guess that means Paul is the only actual conservative in the race.

As to your last point about fraud, I'd ask you to elaborate because you don't make it clear as to what you mean by "just been exposed," but somehow I'd imagine that the response would just be more of the same.

Nice Cannondale.

I don’t think this strategy is as strange as many seem to think. Paul just figures that attacking Romney is a waste of time. Here is why.

Romney is the establishment candidate. Paul is anti-establishment. The act of attacking candidates is designed to weaken their support. For example, attacking Santorum as someone who is big government will cause his support from small government types to fade. Paul figures that his candidacy won’t ever get support from establishment Romney-type voters anyway.

He’s just trying to be as efficient as possible with his attacks, which is smart because he doesn’t have an unlimited amount of money to spend on ads.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bU1xq2_4lHE

Nice going, dumb-dumbs. Is the the #1 goal of the US military to spread al-Qaeda around the world? Because they couldn't have planned it any better if it was.

Peter Schiff didn’t really want to be a Senator, but he was willing to run to try to stop big government. I wonder if he has another run in him. Let’s hope so.