Free Republic

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Former Republican presidential candidate and congressman Ron Paul says secession is happening and it’s “good news.” Paul later predicted the states would stop listening to federal laws. “I would like to start off by talking about the subject and the subject is secession and, uh, nullification, the breaking up of government, and the good news is it’s gonna happen. It’s happening,” Paul, the father of potential Republican presidential candidate Rand Paul, told a gathering at the libertarian Mises Institute in late January. The event Paul was speaking at was titled “Breaking Away: The Case for Secession.” Paul said secession would...

Fun stuff via BuzzFeed, portending an exciting “whose close relative is more of a devastating electoral liability?” primary for the GOP if the two men left standing are Jeb Bush and Rand Paul. I don’t understand this even within the parameters of the Ron Paul worldview. I thought hardcore isolationists — sorry, “non-interventionists” — believe that the war machine will always find a new pretext to keep rolling even if the current one goes bust. Obama, for instance, did eventually get Bin Laden, along with many other Al Qaeda capos … and yet at this very moment there’s an AUMF...

Kentucky Senator Rand Paul has a Ron Paul problem. Or maybe it's a Ron Paul opportunity. Both sides of that particular coin were on display Friday, when Ron - Rand's father - spoke to the International Students for Liberty Conference in Washington, DC. It was the elder Paul's kind of audience - young and enthusiastic about the libertarian emphasis on robust individual freedoms and miniscule government. Crowds like this had fervently supported the former congressman's quixotic bids for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008 and 2012, where he proved to be a pesky participant in the debates and a headache...

Senator Rand Paul is calling for a declaration of war against the Islamic State, a move that promises to shake up the debate over the military campaign in Iraq and Syria as President Obama prepares to ask Congress to grant him formal authority to use force. Mr. Paul, a likely presidential candidate who has emerged as one of the Republican Party’s most cautious voices on military intervention, offered a very circumscribed definition of war in his proposal, which he outlined in an interview on Saturday. He would, for instance, limit the duration of military action to one year and significantly...

The authorization for the use of military force against ISIS that the Obama administration sent Congress this week is not worthy of the name. Its language is far more about what the president won’t do against the terrorist army that controls much of Syria and Iraq—limits on ground troops and a sunset provision for the authorization after three years—than what he will do. Congress should reject it. If the threat of ISIS is as dire as the president says it is in the preamble of his resolution, if ISIS really does pose “a grave threat to the people and territorial...

HOUSTON — Rand Paul wants to lead the United States. On Saturday in Texas, his father was speaking at a conference about how to leave it. “A lot of times people think secession, they paint it as an absolute negative,” said former U.S. Rep. Ron Paul. After all, Paul said, the American Revolution was a kind of secession. “You mean we should have been obedient to the king forever? So it’s all in the way you look at it.” This weekend was a crucial one for Rand Paul, the Republican senator from Kentucky and un­declared candidate for the presidency. He...

Rand Paul has a lot going for him. He inspires the conservative and libertarian wings of the Republican Party. In many ways he’s a breath of fresh air because he’s different than the rest of the GOP. He’s trying to work with constituencies that the GOP normally ignores. He’s making policy arguments that are different than other Republicans and different from other conservatives or libertarians. Rand Paul is personable, which goes a long way on the presidential campaign trail. Rand Paul can unite the right in the GOP. He has the brashness of Ted Cruz and the values of a...

Tea Party champion and conservative firebrand Ted Cruz may be ready to embrace his libertarian side – and he may need to, if he hopes to find a path from Iowa to the White House. As it turns out, the death of the Liberty Movement in Iowa may have been greatly exaggerated. While an establishment resurgence in 2014 spearheaded by Governor Terry Branstad succeeded in purging the Ron Paul element from the leadership of the Republican Party of Iowa, members of the state’s robust and often-boisterous Liberty Movement are turning their attention to greater things – namely, the 2016 presidential...

If Rand Paul wants to have any chance of running for the Republican nomination for president in 2016, not to mention the presidency itself, there is one thing he needs to do immediately. Tell Dad to shut up. In response to the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris, Ron Paul took a break from his usual blame-America-first rhetoric to blame France first. On an internet television show, Paul the Elder declared, “France has been a target for many, many years, because they’ve been involved in foreign affairs in Libya, and they really prodded us along in—recently in Libya, but they’ve been...

In an interview with talk show host Sean Hannity, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) sounded more equivocal about a presidential run than at any time in the last year or so: “If the ideas are resonating — if the ideas look like they have a chance – then it’s much more likely that I’ll make a go of this. If it looks like we’re at 1 percent, we’re not in the top tier, and it’s just going to be a quixotic sort of run, then I think it’s not something I want to do just for educational purposes. I would do...

I try to ignore Ron Paul and his spawn as much as humanly possible but sometimes the doddering old fraud just goes too far. As a recap, Muslim terrorists, or at least everyone in the world thinks they are Muslim terrorists except the Obama administration, stormed the offices of a Parisian magazine that happens to poke fun at Islam and its Mohammed. People were killed. What lesson does Ron Paul draw from this? The French had it coming:(VIDEO-AT-LINK) “But in the context of things, France has been a target for many, many years, because they’ve been involved in foreign affairs...

In remarks this morning from Washington, Secretary of State John Kerry said he agreed with the French imam who called the victims of today's murderous rampage in Paris "martyrs for liberty." Video at link.

France was on high alert on Thursday the day after a terror attack on a satirical magazine left 12 dead. Muslim leaders have condemned the shootings, but fear there may be a backlash. (VIDEO-AT-LINK)The French government has placed the country on the highest state of terror alert after an attack on the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo left 12 dead, including two police. Extra security forces were drafted in to secure mosques, synagogues, department stores, shopping centres, train stations and airports, Prime Minister Manuel Valls said. Paris announced that an extra 650 soldiers and 2,000 more police officers will...

The Associated Press is among the numerous news outlets that have been self-censoring images of the Charlie Hebdo cartoons that may have provoked Wednesday's deadly Paris attack. In a statement, the news organization said that such censorship is standard policy: None of the images distributed by AP showed cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. It’s been our policy for years that we refrain from moving deliberately provocative images. The conservative Washington Examiner publication then pointed out that the AP nonetheless continued to carry an image of Andres Serrano's 1987 "Piss Christ" photograph—which is certainly provocative, having been the subject of massive...

Former Republican presidential candidate and congressman Ron Paul says bad foreign policy is to blame for the Paris terrorist attack on the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo that left at least 12 dead and 11 wounded. “Well, you know, partially what the Secretary of State said is true — this is pretty obscene, when it comes to violence, and libertarians are pretty annoyed by anybody who initiates violence,” said Paul on NewsMaxTV’s Steve Malzberg Show Wednesday. “This is pretty bad.” Paul said the context for the attack, however, was France’s involvement in the Middle East. “But in the context of things,...

Occupy may be gone, but it is clearly not forgotten. The people protesting Eric Garner’s death in New York City were marching to a slightly different drum beat in 2011, but they seem to have returned, having learned something from their previous mistakes.

While both the Ukrainian and Russian governments continue to point fingers at one another for the MH17 crash, former Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX) urged caution Friday against jumping to any conclusions about where blame lies. Some American pundits accuse Vladimir Putin of having “blood on his hands” since the missile that took down the Malaysia Airlines flight may have been a Russian weapon given to pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine. Speaking with Newsmax TV’s John Bachman earlier today, Paul said “Putin is a little bit smarter than that. I don’t think he would ever come close to participating in an act...

BUENOS AIRES, August 5 (RIA Novosti) – Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro dismissed Tuesday accusations of Moscow’s alleged role in the deadly Malaysian passenger plane crash as “primitive.” “Accusing the Russian Federation of destroying the Malaysian Boeing during the flight is horrifying primitivism,” Castro wrote in an article published in Cuba’s Granma newspaper. “Neither President Vladimir Putin, nor Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov nor other Russian leaders could have ever done such a stupid thing,” Castro stressed. Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur crashed in eastern Ukraine on July 17. All 298 people on board,...

WASHINGTON — Kentucky Senator Rand Paul said his support for a filibuster against Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel never meant that he would vote against Hagel's confirmation. "I voted no because I wanted more information and I think that part of what the Senate does is try to get information about the nominees," Paul told reporters in the basement of the Capitol after Hagel's confirmation Tuesday. "I've said all along that I give the president some prerogative in choosing his political appointees." "There are many things I disagree with Chuck Hagel on, there are many things I disagree with John Kerry...