Rand Paul - Big Brother Really Is Watching Us

Big Brother Really Is Watching Us
By Senator Rand Paul

Photo by the Associated Press

When Americans expressed outrage last week over the seizure and surveillance of Verizon's client data by the National Security Agency, President Obama responded: "In the abstract, you can complain about Big Brother . . . but when you actually look at the details, I think we've struck the right balance."

How many records did the NSA seize from Verizon? Hundreds of millions. We are now learning about more potential mass data collections by the government from other communications and online companies. These are the "details," and few Americans consider this approach "balanced," though many rightly consider it Orwellian.

These activities violate the Fourth Amendment, which says warrants must be specific—"particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." And what is the government doing with these records? The president assures us that the government is simply monitoring the origin and length of phone calls, not eavesdropping on their contents. Is this administration seriously asking us to trust the same government that admittedly targets political dissidents through the Internal Revenue Service and journalists through the Justice Department?

No one objects to balancing security against liberty. No one objects to seeking warrants for targeted monitoring based on probable cause. We've always done this. 

What is objectionable is a system in which government has unlimited and privileged access to the details of our private affairs, and citizens are simply supposed to trust that there won't be any abuse of power. This is an absurd expectation. Americans should trust the National Security Agency as much as they do the IRS and Justice Department.

Monitoring the records of as many as a billion phone calls, as some news reports have suggested, is no modest invasion of privacy. It is an extraordinary invasion of privacy. We fought a revolution over issues like generalized warrants, where soldiers would go from house to house, searching anything they liked. Our lives are now so digitized that the government going from computer to computer or phone to phone is the modern equivalent of the same type of tyranny that our Founders rebelled against.

I also believe that trolling through millions of phone records hampers the legitimate protection of our security. The government sifts through mountains of data yet still didn't notice, or did not notice enough, that one of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects was traveling to Chechnya. Perhaps instead of treating every American as a potential terror suspect the government should concentrate on more targeted analysis.

To protect against the invasion of Americans' privacy, I have introduced the Fourth Amendment Restoration Act. I introduced similar Fourth Amendment protections in December and again just last month. Both measures would have prevented the data-mining we're now seeing, but both bills were rejected by the Senate. We will see if this time my colleagues will vote to support the Constitution that they all took an oath to uphold.

I am also looking into a class-action lawsuit to overturn the decisions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that allowed for this to happen. I will take the fight all the way to the Supreme Court if necessary. My office has already heard much enthusiasm for this action.

The administration has responded to the public uproar by simply claiming that it is allowed to have unlimited access to all Americans' private information. This response is a clear indication that the president views our Constitutional "right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects" as null and void. 

If this is the new normal in America, then Big Brother certainly is watching and it's not hyperbolic or extreme to say so. Nor is it unreasonable to fear which parts of the Constitution this government will next consider negotiable or negligible.

Mr. Paul, a Republican, is a senator from Kentucky.

 

A version of this article appeared June 11, 2013, on page A15 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Big Brother Really Is Watching Us.

Source: Wall Street Journal

Why Not Just Settle for Romney?

The lesser of two evils

By Zach Foster

Here are two quick insights I wrote on Facebook on why Ron Paul supporters such as myself will not support either Mitt Romney or Barack Obama this November.

The first was a response to a pen pal of mine and close friend of Mitt Romney, Don Huber, who invited me to “Feel free to reapply and rejoin this winning bandwagon for ‘my old but still younger friend of half a century, Tim Yenmor’... a.k.a. the Honorable W. Mitt Romney... when my other friend Dr. Ron and Carol Paul endorse MR!”

Don, I highly appreciate your generosity and your continued kindness, but there's no way I can support Romney. I can't support a candidate who's taken multiple contradictory positions on the sanctity of life, the individual mandate, TARP bailouts, and deficit spending. There are certain things I hold sacred which I cannot and will not sell out on in order to settle for the lesser of two evils.

If the situation was hypothetically reversed I'm sure Governor Romney would endorse my candidate, and you'd support him as well in order to elect anyone but Barack Obama. On my end, I'm not voting for a candidate per se, but rather a set of principles I can't compromise on and still walk tall afterwards.

The consistent Constitutionalist

The second, a general statement:

Dear Mitt Romney supporters, all the ad hominem attacks and false rumors in the world are not going to make us stop supporting Ron Paul. It's not just the man, but the ideals.

--The racist newsletters were NOT written by him. Period. His actual record has proven him a non-racist.

--He ran as a Libertarian in 1988. So what?! He never sold out on his IDEALS. It's about ideals and philosophy, not about having a D or an R next to your name.

--You all make a big stink about supporting our troops, when more than half of the troops (such as the one writing this letter) are tired of a decade of war and support Ron Paul.

--I'm sure Romney's a kind man and a wonderful father, but he's flip-flopped way too many times on key issues like abortion, deficit spending, bailouts, the individual mandate, and the Bill of Rights for us to take him seriously. He literally says one thing, does another, and says something else after that.

So this is not a challenge or an egging on in any way, but rather a brief but clear explanation of our position.

And I’d like to follow up with a reminder that the “lesser of two evils” is still evil.  The greater evil gives us all someone to rally against because we know that we’re united in opposing him.  The lesser of two evils is the one who makes us abandon our sacred principles, and instead of the people telling the elected officials what they will do, it becomes the elected official telling us what we must settle for.

No more.

Romney image courtesy of Gage Skidmore and Ron Paul image courtesy of Jamie Kelso. Both used via Wikimedia Commons and the Creative Commons Attribution License 3.0 Unported.

Ron Paul Gains Delegates at Maine and Nevada State GOP Conventions Held this Weekend

Paul supporters are enlarging GOP and elevating his platform of constitutionally-limited government and restoration of our economic and civil liberties

LAKE JACKSON, Texas – Supporters of 2012 Republican Presidential candidate Ron Paul made notable gains in state Republican conventions in the key voting states of Maine and Nevada this weekend, affirming his delegate-attainment strategy and injecting uncommon, sorely-needed enthusiasm into GOP party-building efforts.

By Sunday in Maine, Republican convention-goers elected Paul supporters as their state party secretary and chairman, changing the convention atmosphere and altering party operations going forward.  They also elected the state’s RNC committee man and woman, and swept four of four electors.  In addition, Paul supporters won 34 of 50 Maine Republican state committee members elected today, bringing them closer to a majority of the full state committee that consists of 80 members including county chairs.  Especially noteworthy is that the Paul campaign estimates it has elected 20 delegates to the national convention – an airtight majority.  In total, Maine gets 24 delegates, the balance consisting of automatic delegates such as RNC officials, the governor, and the state party chairman.

By Sunday in Nevada, where on Saturday Ron Paul addressed the state convention in Sparks live and in person, Paul supporters won 22 of 28 delegates to the national convention, with establishment-pick Mitt Romney garnering three, and three more reserved for the state GOP chair and two RNC officials.  Other recent developments in Nevada include Paul supporters electing a Paul-friendly state GOP chair by a 2-to-1 margin, the election of a Paul-friendly Nye County GOP chair, acquiring a two-thirds controlling interest in the Clark County GOP executive board, and gaining control of both of the state’s RNC slots.

“We’re extraordinarily pleased with the victories Ron Paul supporters achieved this weekend, and we thank these men and women for their untiring engagement.  Republican Party activists with Paul leanings are affirming the campaign’s delegate-win strategy and making lasting inroads into the party infrastructure, broadening the Republican footprint and strengthening the GOP base that suffers from a dearth of enthusiasm,” said Ron Paul 2012 National Campaign Manager John Tate.

“Ron Paul victories in Maine and Nevada are occurring at a time and in a manner helpful for unseating President Obama and restoring America’s liberty and prosperity – goals that, naturally, all Republicans share,” added Mr. Tate.

Update on the Nevada Republican Convention

Ron Paul speaking in Las Vegas

By Zach Foster

May 6, 2012, 10:45 A.M. -- Though the delegates bound for the National Convention have yet to be elected, the atmosphere is incredibly tense but still shining favorably for the Paul camp.

Though it has been discovered that the Romney camp has done everything in their power to steal the state convention for the dishonest corporate welfarist, going so far as to dress their own storm troopers in Ron Paul gear and distribute fake lists on behalf of the Ron Paul campaign with the names of pro-Romney delegates, in an effort to bamboozle Ron Paul supporters, they Romney thugs are still in the minority in the election.

Unlike 2008, when the Nevada Republican Party shut down the convention early in order to prevent the Paul camp from winning their impending victory, the majority of those attending this year are in the Paul camp.  Whenever a Romney supporter takes the stage to speak, he is heckled by the Paul camp, even Romney’s own son Josh.  When Romney’s supporters begin to chant “Mitt, Mitt, Mitt” they are quickly drowned out by a sea of voices shouting “President Paul!”

Two of Nevada’s incumbent members of the Republican National Committee, Heidi Smith and former Nevada Governor Bob List (known Romney supporters), were booed and voted out of the RNC by the pro-Paul majority, and replaced by Paul supporters Dianna Orrock and James Smack.

Nevada Party leaders are trying to maintain the illusion that there will be Party unity after this convention, but any such notion is a falsehood.  The Romney camp are running on the desperation of having anyone but Obama (but Paul doesn’t get to participate in their utopia), whereas Paul supporters are campaigning on the principles of the U.S. Constitution and a truly free and prosperous society.  Paul supporters are finally making headway in performing the vital surgery on our country to rid it of the Obama- and Romney-supported cancers of perpetual war, deficit spending, inflation, and desecration of the Bill of Rights.

UPDATE: As of 11:00 A.M., Ron Paul won 22 out of 25 of Nevada's delegates to the national convention.

Image courtesy of Gage Skidmore and used via CC attribution license 3.0

Editorial submission: War or Peace?

By Meagan Sharp

Is Iran in 2012 another Iraq like 2003?

First of all, the biggest danger for our country right now is that a president is going to overreact and we are going to end up bombing Iran. If we can live through the cold war, which we did, with 30,000 missiles pointed at us then we should sit back and think and not assume that we are going to be attacked! Look what happened with Libya! ISRAEL has 300 nuclear weapons so why are we making them out to be some poor defenseless nation? We have 45 bases in IRAN (not including submarines)! IRAN can’t even produce enough gasoline for themselves and we're worried about them obtaining ONE weapon? Politicians are building this war up just like they did Iraq. We do not need to get involved in another war people!

As if that crisis wasn’t bad enough, President Obama has made it very clear that he will not only ignore the US Constitution, but will refuse to listen to congress when they don't let him have his way. Obama ignores the US Constitution and Congress when it suits his purposes. He issues edicts without regard to the US Constitution and signs into law unconstitutional acts. He is blatantly inconsistent, and he continues to get your support???

Oh, and for those of you who think he’s saving the economy and lowering unemployment: Our national debt has actually increased since Bush was in office, to be specific, the Debt rose $4.899 trillion during the two terms of the Bush presidency and has now gone up $4.939 trillion since President Obama took office. As for unemployment, North Carolina has lost nearly 50,000 jobs since President Obama took office and the unemployment rate is 9.9 percent. In Charlotte, unemployment is even higher, 10 percent. In total, 450,000 North Carolinians are unemployed, up 13 percent since Obama took office and these are just TWO examples.

HOWEVER, just because I am completely against Obama being reelected I want to make it clear that I am just as adamant about Romney NOT being elected either. What Republicans don’t seem to understand is that if Ron Paul is NOT on the ballot, none of his supporters are going to vote for Romney. Ron Paul is the only politician that has a chance of beating Obama. If you vote for Romney and don’t vote for Ron Paul then you can blame yourselves for Obama’s reelection and be prepared for a socialist society.

SO PLEASE, vote for peace, not war; for restraint, not excess; and for civil liberties, not authoritarianism.

RON PAUL 2012.

Feel free to share this page with everyone you know!

Reader submissions are always welcome. Send yours to PoliticalSpectrumPublishing@gmail.com.

Image is the property of MAD Magazine, not the article author neither the editor.  It is used here via Fair Use.

Ron Paul Super PAC Maintains Media Boycott with Nevada Broadcast

Revolution PAC kicks off caucuses with third live election results show.

 

NORTHBROOK, IL – February 2, 2012 – Revolution PAC, backer of U.S. Rep. Ron Paul’s bid for the Republican presidential nomination, will kick off a week of critical contests Saturday with its third live election results show. The webcast, held in conjunction with the Nevada Caucuses, will begin at 6:00 p.m. CST and conclude following the announcement of the Clark County results, which is expected sometime after 9:30 p.m. CST.

 

Participate by logging onto www.revolutionpac.com.

 

In addition to real-time coverage of the Nevada contest, Saturday’s program – the third in RevPAC’s groundbreaking alternative news series – will examine the Maine Caucuses, taking place over the next week, as well as Tuesday’s Colorado and Minnesota caucuses. Participants numbered in the tens of thousands during the super committee’s first two live broadcast events.

 

“Ron Paul placed second in Nevada in 2008, and he’s only grown his wellspring of support in the Silver State since that time,” explains Revolution PAC Chairman Gary Franchi. “Clearly, the caucus process favors a candidate with a fervent following, like Rep. Paul, and Revolution PAC is thrilled to again be on the front lines Saturday in covering what is certain to be an invigorating outcome for the grassroots.”

 

Live election analysis will be provided Saturday via Skype by Revolution PAC’s Nevada correspondents, author and founder of the Blue Republican movement Robin Koerner, author and esteemed Austrian Economist Walter Block, and political writer and Republican Liberty Caucus Chairman Dave Nalle. An in-studio panel will field viewers’ Twitter and chat room queries and break down the most important issues in the race to the Republican National Convention in August.

 

Revolution PAC’s first-of-its-kind webcast January 21 followed the super committee’s call for a nationwide boycott of cable/network outlets, which have exhibited consistent reporting bias against Rep. Paul. On-the-ground reports suggest that at least one network – CNN – has moved with some damage control, reassigning correspondent Dana Bash from Ron Paul campaign coverage following subjective statements raised by Revolution PAC.

 

“While corporate media conspires to consolidate support behind its preferred candidate, ‘We the People’ must work harder and more creatively to have our voice heard,” continues Franchi. “Bottom line, delegates are the key to winning the Republican nomination. CNN and Fox won’t give you the straight story on that process. Revolution PAC will.”

 

The latest USA Today/Gallup Poll shows Ron Paul and Mitt Romney as the only Republican contenders competitive against Barack Obama in November.

 

Revolution PAC is supporting U.S. Rep. Ron Paul’s bid for the Republican presidential nomination and his consistent, constitutional message with targeted TV advertising, direct mail campaigns and innovative Web promotions complemented by billboards and radio ads in key primary states. Unlimited donations by individuals, businesses and organizations are being accepted by Revolution PAC to support that effort.

Source: Revolution PAC

Ron Paul Celebrates Historic Second Place Win in New Hampshire Primary

“We urge Ron Paul’s opponents who have been unsuccessfully trying to be the conservative alternative to Mitt Romney to unite by getting out of the race and uniting behind Paul’s candidacy.”

LAKE JACKSON, Texas – Ron Paul tonight scored an historic second-place victory in the 2012 New Hampshire Primary.  Below please find comments from National Campaign Chairman Jesse Benton:

“Ron Paul tonight had an incredibly strong second-place finish in New Hampshire and has stunned the national media and political establishment.

“When added to Paul’s top-tier showing in Iowa, it’s clear he is the sole Republican candidate who can take on and defeat both Mitt Romney and Barack Obama.

“The race is becoming more clearly a two-man race between establishment candidate Mitt Romney and Ron Paul, the candidate of authentic change.  That means there is only one true conservative choice.

“Ron Paul has won more votes in Iowa and New Hampshire than any candidate but Mitt Romney.

“Ron Paul and Mitt Romney have been shown in national polls to be the only two candidates who can defeat Barack Obama.

“And Ron Paul and Mitt Romney are the only two candidates who can run a full, national campaign, competing in state after state over the coming weeks and months.   Ron Paul’s fundraising numbers — over $13 million this quarter — also prove he will be able to compete with Mitt Romney.  No other candidate can do all of these things.

“Ron Paul is clearly the conservative alternative to Mitt Romney as the campaign goes forward.

“We urge Ron Paul’s opponents who have been unsuccessfully trying to be the conservative alternative to Mitt Romney to unite by getting out of the race and uniting behind Paul’s candidacy.

“Ron Paul has the boldest plan to cut spending, a dedication to protecting life, and a lifelong dedication to the Constitution and limited government.  He also has the necessary support to campaign nationwide against Mitt Romney.

“Our campaign is already planning ahead for South Carolina, Florida, and beyond.  Soon Ron Paul will head to South Carolina to begin a feverish round of campaigning.

“Ron Paul is in this race for the long haul.  And he is ready to fight.

 

“See you on the campaign trail.”