I still think that a Free Republic in which Congress had to declare WAR would be more likely to result in the political will to win a war once declared.
Posted on 09/07/2007 8:29:47 AM PDT by rface
The Legal Newswire - It is obvious that, after seeing the Fox News Debates on Sept. 5th, 2007, the mainstream media and GOP see Ron Paul as enough of a threat to stop ignoring him, and to start ridiculing him. From using a split screen to show Giuliani smirking as Ron Paul answers his questions, to the background chuckles as he is asked questions, Ron Paul has apparently become the butt of an inside joke.
However, with a 33% win in the post-debate poll, it is Ron Paul who should be laughing. Of course, Sean Hannity could not resist making the ridiculous statement that the “Paulites” had spammed the poll. The argument, both false and illogical, is used to attempt to plant the seed in the minds of the American people that Ron can’t win, and conclude he is a “wasted” vote.
If it were possible to vote multiple times from one cell phone, then what would be the advantage for Ron Paul anyway? The mainstream media would have us believe that the “front-runner” candidates are so popular, wouldn’t their supporters also text multiple times? In any case, it is impossible to vote twice. I tried it to make sure. So, unless Ron Paul supporters have suddenly become an independently wealthy group of lunatics, with dozens of cell phones each, the results must be representative of REAL PEOPLE.
The bottom line? The FOX News talking heads would have us believe that when the polls show unacceptable results, they must be wrong. This argument is wearing very thin. The American viewers who were paying attention were sure to see the obvious bias of the debate coverage. A full thirty minutes passed before Dr. Paul was given a chance to answer a question. This, after the “big three” had answered two or three each. Tancredo was also given very little time compared to McCain, Romney, and Giuliani.
The bias was not only in the in total time, but also the placement of the time. McCain, Giuliani, and Romney got both the first and the last word in the minds of the American people, opening and closing the debates. Then, they were the first to be interviewed by Neocon lapdog Hannity.
Ron Paul will not win over the entire Republican base. But he does not have to. The Ron Paul Revolution embodies the United, not Divided, States, as Huckabee would insinuate. He is pulling support from both sides of the aisle, drawing in the independents and the disenfranchised as well. The Republican and Democratic voters who put party loyalty above the issues will never vote for Ron Paul. Fortunately, they represent the minority.
So here we are, in the second phase of Gandhi’s aformentioned four phases. This is good news, because it means we are starting to make a difference. However, I predict that it won’t take long for them to move into full attack mode, looking for any and every opportunity to discredit and expose the skeletons in the closet Ron Paul must be hiding from the American people. Fortunately for us, we have a man with the integrity, character, and voting record to back up what he says.
Ron Paul is an asshat. He lives in a fantasy isolationist dream where he thinks there are no global politics and the events of the world have no influence on the continental US. He absurdly thinks if we leave the middle east it will solve our problems.
I dont have to ridicule Ron Paul, as there is nothing serious about him. Ron Paul deserves to be ridiculed every day, as do his kook supporters.
That makes you a liberal. Anyone that holds such a view doesn’t belong in the Republican party.
Do you honestly believe that had P.L. 107-243 contained the words "Wage War", that the Democrats and RINOs would have acted differently? The way this war has been waged is not the result of semantics but of anti-war and anti-American sentiment and beliefs on a large part of our nation's leaders. And I include Ron Paul in that group.
If this is truly Ron Paul's stance, that the absence of the term "Wage War" has caused these conditions, then why not seek to change the conditions rather than withdraw from the theater?
Oh, I know the answer to that as well as you. So don't bother. I just thought I'd point out your muddled reasoning.
Congress gave the President the power to: "use the Armed Forces of the United States as he determines to be necessary and appropriate in order to—
"(1) defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq; and
"(2) enforce all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq."
There's nothing in this that says "up to but not including the waging of war". It says "as he determines to be necessary and appropriate in order to-". Excuse me, but that openly gives him the right to wage war.
Get off this. You people are making fools of yourselves.
LOL!
Of all the candidates vying for the Presidency today, Dr. Paul is by far the most reflective of fiscal and social conservative policy. Best of all, he knows better than to treat our Constitution and all it entails as a flimsy “living, breathing document.”
I am undecided who to vote for as of now, but I can tell you there have been few if any good arguments against Dr. Paul’s positions. Only name calling, overreaction, and oversimplification of his ideas.
I think that trying to elect a President faithful to the Constitution is trying to “seek to change the conditions” that have us killing our troops to serve globalist interests in a context where we are not “allowed” to fight to win.
Dr. Paul’s stance on the war is a tiny, tiny component of a larger (and now-radical) world view that would actually foster a Free Republic, unlike the rest of the candidates, all of whom are tone-deaf to the Constitution in one fashion or another. I think there is a good case to be made that Dr. Paul is dead wrong on pulling out now that we got in (the “fight to win” alternative still being preferrable), but in the context of the larger problems of national bankruptcy and federally-driven moral decline, the Iraq War is a sideshow. I support him even if he is wrong about pulling out, because he is right about more important issues.
Your statement that “Congress gave the President the power” seems to miss the whole point of Constitutional government. Whatever legitimate powers Congress and the President have come from the Constitution. The President is the Commander in Chief. Once Congress declares war, it is his business how to wage it. The Constitutional method for dealing with terrorists short of declaring war would be letters of marque and reprisal.
The issue of Marque and Reprisal was raised before Congress by Dr. Paul after the September 11, 2001 attacks, and again on July 21, 2007. Dr. Paul, defining the attacks as an act of “air piracy,” introduced the Marque and Reprisal Act of 2001, which would have granted the president the authority to use Letters of Marque and Reprisal against the specific terrorists, instead of warring against a foreign state. Dr. Paul compared the terrorists to pirates in that they are difficult to fight by traditional military means.
If today’s release is genuine, it suggests that the Commander in Chief has been unable or unwilling to capture Bin Laden for many years now. I rather suspect that mercenaries unconstrained by the State Department and our rules of engagement could do a better job.
Actually, SEC. 2. FINDINGS. [Finding 6.] of that 2001 act states the following:
(6) That under Article I, Section 8 of the United States Constitution, Congress has the power to grant letters of marque and reprisal to punish, deter, and prevent the piratical aggressions and depredations and other acts of war of the al Qaeda conspirators.
Dr. Paul himself finds Al Qaeda has performed an act of war against the United States. Those are his words from his bill.
Since war has been declared against the United States (as recognized by Dr. Paul), a declaration of war by Congress is superfluous. Congress has acted, giving the President all the powers he needs to fight Al Qaeda. We can discuss whether we have made the most sensible and proactive use of our options, but the right to wage war should NOT be part of that discussion. To make it so only show our enemy our divisions, and gives him strength to continue on against us.
That's rich.
L.Ron cannot even READ the Constitution, let alone attempt to sing along to it.
If I hurt your feelings with my comments, you have my apologies.
I still think that a Free Republic in which Congress had to declare WAR would be more likely to result in the political will to win a war once declared.
And I believe you are putting far too much emphasis on a figure of speech. Congress voted to give the President the powers of war, even though they never made a formal declaration.
Now, how much of this was oversight, or how much was political expediency on the part of the Democrats? And regardless of a figure of speech, is it right and proper for we as Americans to display such irresolution once we have committed our forces, irresolution obvious both to the men and women who are sacrificing for us AND to the enemy who wants to destroy our way of life? NO. ABSOLUTELY NO!!!
You and Ron Paul can argue semantics, phraseology, the meaning of 'is', whatever. But you are doing significant harm to this nation and it's fighting forces. For that, I hold nothing but disgust.
Goodnight!
apologize to them:
the current occupant of the White House, John McCain, Mitt Romney, Julie-Annie, Limbaugh and other delusional neo-con chicken hawks referring to the state of Iraq.
And send an apology to the thousands of Americans murdered on 9/11, whose deaths Ron Paul attributes to US foreign policy, not rightly to the acts of insane Islamist thugs who use America as a convenient target in their own insane unhappiness with their own governments. You guys sicken me with your blame America crap.
As for me, save it, troll.
Paulian nonsense.
First of all Congress authorized the POTUS to use military force, a de facto declaration of war. There is no constitutiinally mandated method of "declaring war", a brief "kick Iraq's Ass with the US Military" would suffice as a declaration.
Secondly, Letters of Marquee and Reprisal are not issued to a POTUS, they are issued to private citizens.
Presumably with Ron in charge, we would disband our intel services, ie: the CIA and FBI, and issue Letters of M&R to the local private eye and "soldiers of fortune" to fight our wars. Frank Church and Robert Toricelli would agree with Ron Paul on the deballing of our intel but I don't think many conservatives will.
Breathtaking stupidity.
The Paulettes are thick as files tonigt. I thought after JRs bitchslap they’d tone it down...
As far as I can tell the CIA has been fully compromised by Soviet spies and criminal ever since WWII and is no asset to the United States. I suggest you read “Legacy of Ashes” before you defend the institution (though being written by a liberal, it fails to draw the obvious conclusions from the spectacular list of failures documented). More recently, the CIA was involved in helping Clinton cover-up the missile downing of TWA 800 and now seems to work full time at trying to make the President look like a fool. As far as I can tell, we’d be better off starting from scratch with a new agency.
And of course we wouldn’t use soldiers of fortune to “fight our wars”; we’d use the armed forces. Simplistic attacks on Dr. Paul do not contribute to reasoned discussion of the question whether it makes more sense to go after terrorists with the Army or smaller squads—like the Mossad.
No, it's going to get worse as we get closer to the primaries. They have their eyes set on insuring the primary process is top loaded in favor of Paul, and this is part of the process.
These guys are screaming...
In the end, I am willing to bet they will self destruct.
Peggy Noonan in the WSJ:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118919705126820905.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
The debate was full of fireworks about Iraq, about its essentials — the rightness of the endeavor, and what should rightly be done now. From the libertarian Ron Paul a blunt argument against the war: We never should have gone in and we should get out. “The people who say there’ll be a blood bath are the same ones who said it would be a cakewalk. . . . Why believe them?” His foreign policy: “Mind our own business, bring our troops home, defend our country, defend our borders.” After Mr. Paul spoke, it seemed half the room booed, but the other applauded. When a thousand Republicans are in a room and one man of the eight on the stage takes a sharply minority viewpoint on a dramatic issue and half the room seems to cheer him, something’s going on.
Sparks fly between Mike Huckabee and Ron Paul.
Ron Paul’s support isn’t based on his persona, history or perceived power. What support he has comes because of his views. As he spoke, you could hear other candidates laughing in the background. They should stop giggling, and engage in a serious way.
And Dr. Paul is indeed a compadre of Robert Toricelli and Frank Church in that all three would leave Americans deaf, dumb and blind to the goings on in the world and underworld.
Like I said, breathtaking stupidity.
Once upon a time FReepers used to do this too. So now it's a cardinal sin that Paul supporters are doing it?
BTW, Fox's poll was only one vote per cell phone. Unless Paul supporters had a dozen cell phones on them each, they pretty much followed the rules. So now Fox is debunking it's own poll.
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