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Gee, Ron Paul, Mr. Super Principle who stood shoulder to shoulder with Kucinich recently, who voted against holding UN dues hostage pending reform because, he said, the reforms would require the UN to actually define terrorism and enforce it. Now maybe he's right that it gives the UN new powers (although I doubt it, given the UN's already wide latitude in methods of peacekeeping), but given his anti-UN status, you would think the possibility of cutting off any UN funds would excite him. Besides, it's not like the UN can't take on this reform without the threat of the House to pull funding.

Ron Paul isn't funny anymore. It seems everytime he votes with Republicans he issues a half-page press release. Everytime he votes with Democrats, he has a press conference, issues a 5 page press release filled with tortured logic and is generally insufferable. And he never just abstains.

I think I know Paul's game and it isn't Libertarian and it isn't pretty. The fact that he's well-published in lewrockwell should give some clue. What you are talking about is a nonbinding resolution of May 2, 2002.

Those voting no: Byrd, Hollings; Abercrombie, Bonior, Boucher, Condit, Conyers, DeFazio, Dingell, Hilliard, Inslee, Jackson, Jr., Kleczka, Barbara Lee, McKinney, George Miller, Obey, Rahall, Fortney Pete Stark.

The Republicans to vote against it were Ron Paul, Thomas Petri, Dana Rohrabacher and Nick Smith.

The legislation stated the US' solidarity with Israel with regard to terrorism and cited "the number of Israelis killed during that time [since September 2000] by suicide terrorist attacks alone, on a basis proportional to the United States population, is approximately 9,000, three times the number killed in the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington on September 11, 2001."

Paul's statement on this includes some choice statements: "legislation that clearly and openly favors one side in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?"; "This kind of numbers game with the innocent dead strikes me as terribly disrespectful and completely unhelpful. "; "It is, when speaking of the dead, the one-sidedness of this bill that is so unfortunate."; "it is bad enough that we are intervening at all in this conflict, but this legislation strips any lingering notion that the United States intends to be an honest broker"; "What incentive does Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat or his organization have to return to the negotiating table if we as "honest broker" make it clear that in Congress’s eyes, the Palestinians are illegitimate terrorists?"

He believes that "Constitutionally" we shouldn't get involved in overseas conflicts and yet gets quite exorcised over one particular conflict and cares very much how it plays out and who wins. Not to mention his laughable naivete regarding Arafat.

He could have abstained and yet chose not to. That, and his incessant press conferences, tell me a lot about Ron Paul.