Allison Bricker

OFFICIAL STATEMENT – Amid much fanfare last week, the last supposed “combat” troops left Iraq as the administration touted the beginning of the end of the Iraq War and a change in the role of the United States in that country. Considering the continued public frustration with the war effort, and with the growing laundry list of broken promises, this was merely another one of the administration’s operations in political maneuvering and semantics in order to convince an increasingly war-weary public that the Iraq War is at last ending. However, military officials confirm that we are committed to intervention in that country for years to come, and our operations have in fact, changed minimally, if really at all. [TRANSCRIPT]

Related Material(s)
	Dr. Ron Paul Texas Straight Talk for August 30th, 2010 “Iraq – An End or an Escalation?” TRANSCRIPT (PDF 246kb)

Source(s): Representative Ron Paul, House Website • MinnesotaChris YouTube Channel

The Smoking Argus

Republican Senate Candidate Lets us Know that Massive Federal Intervention into our Lives is Only Bad When Under the Control of Democrats.

Former Florida Speaker of the House and Republican Senatorial Candidate Marco Rubio delivers this week’s  “opposition” party’s remark’s. He outlines how due to massive intervention by the Federal Government, the great American experiment now finds itself navigating extremely troubled waters. However, talking out of the other side of his mouth, he promises to work towards repealing “ObamaCare” whilst simultaneously saddling Americans with the GOP’s version of Federal Intervention into healthcare, which should it come to pass will go on to be known as “BoehnerCare”.[TRANSCRIPT]

Related Material(s)
	GOP Weekly Remarks by Senate Candidate Marco Rubio: Federal Government is Only Destructive When Democrats are in Charge TRANSCRIPT (PDF 251KB)

Source(s): Republican National Committee YouTube Channel

The Smoking Argus

—Begin Official Statement—

Weekly Address: President Obama: As the Combat Mission in Iraq Ends, We Must Pay Tribute to Those Who Have Served

WASHINGTON D.C. – In this week’s address, President Obama pledged to uphold the sacred trust the nation has with its troops and veterans as the combat mission in Iraq comes to an end. The administration is building a 21st century VA [Veterans Administration], making it easier for veterans with PTSD to receive the benefits they need, funding and implementing a Post-9/11 GI Bill, and devoting new resources to job training and placement to help those veterans looking for work in a tough economy.[TRANSCRIPT]

—End Official Statement—

Related Material(s)
	President Obama Weekly Address: The End of Combat Operations in Iraq TRANSCRIPT (PDF 256kb)

Source(s): The White House, Briefing Room • The White House YouTube Channel

Wire Report

None Dare Call It Tyranny

(WIRE/FFF/SR) – If you want to know what tyranny is like, look around.

The national government — specifically the executive branch — can do pretty much what it wants. It could bomb Iran tomorrow without a declaration of war from Congress. It can — and does — conduct secret wars and covert operations against countries that have done nothing to us. Of course, they are secret only to the ignorant taxpayers who must finance them and perhaps suffer when the provoked retaliation occurs. It can have men behind PlayStation consoles in Nevada fire Hellfire missiles from aerial drones on people in Pakistan, Yemen, and elsewhere.

This tyrannical government can send any foreigner picked up anywhere in the world to third countries known for torturing prisoners. It can hold people accused of nothing indefinitely in prisons in Cuba and Afghanistan and torture them into making false confessions. It can conduct a war crimes trial in a military kangaroo court for a man, Omar Khadr, held captive for eight years after he was picked up at the age of 15 during a U.S. assault on villagers near Kabul. His torture-induced “confessions” will be admissible. All this is in violation of commitments under the Optional Protocol on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict not to treat children in war as though they were adults.

It can assassinate even American citizens abroad without a scent of due process.

It is a government that can write its own warrants without judicial review — and call them national security letters — in order to conduct fishing expeditions in anyone’s electronic records. But that isn’t enough power for the present Progressive administration, which wants the freedom to examine our browser histories and email correspondents’ names. The Bill of Rights, like the Geneva Convention, has become “quaint” and obsolete.

Like any self-respecting tyranny, it tries to keep the truth from its subjects. Comforting words camouflage the 50,000 armed and combat-ready troops that will remain in Iraq after “withdrawal.” Their “primary” mission is to train an army whose own general says won’t be ready for years. This gross deception follows on the heralded “surge,” which supposedly turned things around in Iraq. What “worked,” however, was not U.S. military prowess or Gen. David Petraeus’s brilliance, but the spreading of American taxpayers’ cash to buy off Sunni insurgents and the denouement of ethnic cleansing in Baghdad.

And, again, like any self-respecting tyranny, it bridles at leaks of classified documents that tell the people the truth. Solemn administration officials condemn Wikileaks and its sources for supposedly jeopardizing U.S. troops and Afghan collaborators, while adding that nothing new had been revealed. With no sense of irony, the same officials find blood on the hands of Wikileaks’ Julian Assange, ignoring the rivers of blood their policies and weapons have produced in the Middle East and South Central Asia. Without those policies, there would be nothing to leak. Some call for the assassination of Assange, and for all we know he is on President Obama’s kill list. Meanwhile a courageous young soldier, Bradley Manning, who apparently leaked video of American troops committing cold-blooded murder in Baghdad, faces 52 years in prison.

Now we are being softened up for the next war, against Iran. As in 2002 with Iraq’s phantom WMDs, the empire advance men tell us Iran is building nuclear weapons, and Obama and Secretary of State Clinton say “all options are on the table,” which phrase includes hydrogen bombs. Once again a Big Lie is repeated without proof. The reason is simple: all evidence runs the other way. The government’s own intelligence agencies say Iran has no nuclear-weapons program, and the International Atomic Energy Agency is on the scene. But no matter. If it suits the tyrannical administration or its partner in empire, Israel, bombs of some kind will fall. The consequences all around will be horrible.

Can it really be tyranny if we get to vote? Yes. Thomas Jefferson warned of “elective despotism.” How valuable is your one vote when the government manipulates and distorts the flow of information, when Congress capitulates, and when the “adversarial” mainstream media act like government press agents, if not adoring lapdogs. The ugly truth is out there, but you have to want to know it.

Sheldon Richman, Editor “The Freeman”

Sheldon Richman is editor of The Freeman, published by The Foundation for Economic Education in Irvington, New York, and serves as senior fellow at The Future of Freedom Foundation. He is the author of FFF’s award-winning book Separating School & State: How to Liberate America’s Families; Your Money or Your Life: Why We Must Abolish the Income Tax; and FFF’s newest book Tethered Citizens: Time to Repeal the Welfare State. Calling for the abolition, not the reform, of public schooling. Separating School & State has become a landmark book in both libertarian and educational circles. In his column in the Financial Times, Michael Prowse wrote: “I recommend a subversive tract, Separating School & State by Sheldon Richman of the Cato Institute, a Washington think tank… . I also think that Mr. Richman is right to fear that state education undermines personal responsibility…” Mr. Richman’s articles on population, federal disaster assistance, international trade, education, the environment, American history, foreign policy, privacy, computers, and the Middle East have appeared in the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, American Scholar, Chicago Tribune, USA Today, Washington Times, Insight, Cato Policy Report, Journal of Economic Development, The Freeman, The World & I, Reason, Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, Middle East Policy, Liberty magazine, and other publications. He is a contributor to the Fortune Encyclopedia of Economics. A former newspaper reporter and former senior editor at the Cato Institute, Mr. Richman is a graduate of Temple University in Philadelphia.

Guest Contributor

MANDEVILLE, LOUISIANA/Mike Church -  Much has been made about the “Tea Party” movement and other American’s calls to “return to the Constitution” and get “our government back” from the politicians and special interests that have stolen it from us and our posterity. There are many thoughtful plans being promoted that should the Republican Party regain control of the House of Representatives, people feel they should pursue. These plans offer various degrees of remodeling the federal system but do nothing to alter its inexorable course toward either an Oligarchy or acting national democratic legislature.

I offer as a counterpoint this brief list of actions that would merely begin the process of “returning to the Constitution”. The list could easily number in the hundreds of pages and resemble one of the current Congress’s legislative acts in both size and scope and even that wouldn’t completely “return us to the Constitution.”

With an open mind and with an even more hopeful heart I offer this brief set of actions that would only begin the “return” process and challenge my fellow citizens to consider the magnitude of what must be done to “secure the [former] blessing of liberty to ourselves AND our posterity.

Authors Disclaimer – I make no claim to the precise naming of all agencies, Acts and or laws cited herein.

1. Freeze all federal hiring, this includes funding requests from the executive branch to hire.

2. Repeal the Budget Act of 1974 and all it’s contingent COLA “mandates” no matter the agency or program they are applicable to.

3. Freeze under threat of rescinding funding any and all new regulations currently under review or consideration

4. Have an up or down vote on a Declaration of War with Iraq and with Afghanistan. if either fails then troop withdrawals must begin immediately.

5. Pass the Private Property Restoration Act which among other things shall forbid any federal magistrate from hearing any cases to restrict use of private property.

6. Repeal the AMT permanently by statute.

7. Repeal the capital gains tax.

8. Refuse to fund the Education Department and the Department of Energy, any programs, grants projects or construction begun under these agencies must cease. The EPA’s charter must be rewritten to make it clear that it only has jurisdiction over federal and or territorial waters and land.

9. Repeal ObamaCare and all contingent legislation. Congress must then use legitimate Commerce Clause powers to “make commerce regular” and remove from the tax code all subsidies, all claims of tax credit, any and all restrictions federal law imposes on the sale or use of major medical health insurance. This must include federal recognition of PPO, HMO or other plans created to satisfy Congress.

10. Repeal the FICA and sunset the program by Jan 1, 2030. Establish a cutoff date for continued payment eligibility such as born on or before December 31, 1959.

11. Repeal the Patriot Act of 2001, 2005 and sunset the Department of Homeland Security on or before December 31, 2012.

12. Repeal all mandates, taxes and law pertaining to the SCHIP program.

13. Announce the return of U.S. Gold and Silver bullion coins as legal tender and order the treasury to begin the purchase of bullion with the intent of eliminating paper currency in favor of gold and silver coin and gold and silver coin backed notes.

14. Pass the Debt Consolidation and Repayment Act. This Act will require the sale of all lands currently “owned” by the U.S. government which do not house “needful buildings, docks, arsenals, forts and magazines”. This is not limited to “Parks” and “National forests”. All proceeds are to be solely applicable to the repayment of the U.S. Governments outstanding debts both domestic and foreign.

15. End the federal tax designations enacted and known as 501 (c), (g), 503, 527 e.g. “non-profits”.

16. Repeal the “Income tax witholding act” and enact an immediate and deduction free, flat income tax law, payable once per year by each citizen.

17. Repeal all corporate and business interest, income and profit taxation.

18. Heed the call of 38 states that shall call an convention to amend the Constitution under Article V of the U.S. Constitution.

Mike Church, Sirius/XM Radio Talkshow Host “The Mike Church Show”, Singer/Songwriter, and Owner “Founding Father Films”

In the sea of nationally syndicated Straussian Neo-Conservative voices which dominate talk-radio, Mike Church is the lone champion of “little-r” Republicanism regardless of which “party” is in control. He speaks passionately about the necessity of returning to a humble foreign policy, abolishing the FEDERAL RESERVE, the insidious nature of Income Taxation, the false choice of Democrat or Republican, and advocates tirelessly for a full-restoration of the Constitution. As such, and as one of the only voices to have a nationally broadcast platform, Mike is quickly becoming a favorite amongst the burgeoning “Liberty Movement” which sprang up across the internet during Dr. Ron Paul’s 2008 Presidential Campaign. Further, Mike is also an author, filmmaker and singer/songwriter in addition to his duties as host of “The Mike Church Show” Mike uses facts and the actual writings produced by the Founding Generation to promote the singular notion that in order to save our future, we must look back to the principles our beloved union was founded upon. He is also known for writing and producing a bevy of parody songs that use humor as a vehicle to drive home serious political points. His rendition of the Simon & Garfunkel classic, “Mrs. Robinson,” aptly entitled “Mr. Jefferson” racked up nearly 200,000 views in its first few days on YouTube and was on its way to becoming viral before Google/YouTube stepped in and pulled the clip from the site for reasons the site has never been able to explain. (the clip was later re-uploaded and spread by others) Still, Mike’s message could not be silenced, as it became the theme song for hundreds of “Tax Day Tea Party” events across the country in 2009. Mike is also the author, producer, and a voice talent behind the heralded documentaries: “Road to Independence” (the story of the Declaration of Independence) and “The Fame of Our Fathers: How Immortality Inspired Our Constitution;” and “The Spirit of ’76”. The third in the series, “Spirit” is also the first feature-length film from Mike Church’s Founding Father Films. The company is currently in production to bring an animated-feature length film version to theaters in the fall of 2010. The Mike Church show can be heard daily Monday through Friday from 6:00am to 9:00am EST on SiriusXM PATRIOT

Wire Report

(WIRE/Ind.Inst.) – The U.S. Justice Department is apparently considering prosecuting Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, which is a Web site that publishes classified documents from governments, under the rarely used Espionage Act of 1917. Such a prosecution would have adverse effects on the American people’s right to know what their government is doing in a republic that is supposed to be run by them.

Ironically, the U.S. government may have leaked the threat of prosecution to coerce Assange into giving back 76,000 classified documents on the war in Afghanistan and deleting them from his Web site, which the Pentagon has demanded. More important, this threat may be meant to intimidate Assange from making public another 15,000 documents that he says will be even juicier than the previous release.

The Espionage Act, originally passed during World War I, was designed to prosecute spies from foreign powers. Yet Assange, who is Australian and spends most of his time in Belgium, Iceland, and Sweden, is hardly a foreign spy. While spies operate in the shadows and try to help foreign governments against the United States, Assange gets documents employees of various governments willingly give him and publishes them widely so citizens can see what their governments are up to.

The threatened prosecution may be just a bluff, because the Justice Department recently was forced to drop a similar case against two American pro-Israel lobbyists for taking documents from Larry Franklin, a Department of Defense employee who was successfully prosecuted for violating his secrecy oath. It is probably kosher, although somewhat hypocritical, for the government to prosecute government employees, such as Franklin and Pfc. Bradley Manning, a U.S. intelligence analyst who allegedly leaked a video of U.S. helicopter gunships killing a Reuters journalist in Iraq and who is suspected of leaking the treasure trove of documents from Afghanistan. The hypocrisy comes in because the Justice Department leaked the threat of prosecuting Assange, intentions that are usually kept secret, and high-level government officials regularly leak highly classified information to further their own policy agendas during bureaucratic turf battles. However, prosecuting people who just publicize leaks threatens all journalists who regularly publish stories using leaks from government officials.

Such journalistic stories are valuable and necessary, because much hush-hush information is overclassified, is kept under wraps only because it is embarrassing to the U.S. government, or is classified to keep the public in the dark about questionable government policies or actions. During the Cold War and continuing to this day, the American public is often the last to know information that is common knowledge among intelligence agencies of adversarial nations. Excessive government secrecy is a serious and underrated problem in a republic and has been exacerbated by the spike in clandestine government actions in the Bush-Obama war on terror.

If the government of a republic is going to keep secrets from its own people for their own good (faith is required here), they should keep the restricted information to the minimum. If the government drastically reduced its vast storehouse of secrets to what was truly needed to protect intelligence agents and troops in the field, whistleblowers such as Manning would have much less reason to leak and would likely have more respect for the necessity not to disclose the remaining vital information.

Most important, if a republican government cannot keep its secrets secret, it should not prosecute third-party, non-governmental recipients of the material, but should concentrate on plugging the leaks in its security system.

© 2010 The Independent Institute

Ivan Eland, Senior Fellow and Director of the Center on Peace and Liberty, The Independent Institute

Ivan Eland is Senior Fellow and Director of the Center on Peace & Liberty at The Independent Institute. Dr. Eland is a graduate of Iowa State University and received an M.B.A. in applied economics and a Ph.D. in Public Policy from George Washington University. He has been Director of Defense Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, and he spent 15 years working for Congress on national security issues, including stints as an investigator for the House Foreign Affairs Committee and Principal Defense Analyst at the Congressional Budget Office. He also has served as Evaluator-in-Charge (national security and intelligence) for the U.S. General Accounting Office (now the Government Accountability Office), and has testified on the military and financial aspects of NATO expansion before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, on CIA oversight before the House Government Reform Committee, and on the creation of the Department of Homeland Security before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Dr. Eland is the author of Partitioning for Peace: An Exit Strategy for Iraq, Recarving Rushmore: Ranking the Presidents on Peace, Prosperity, and Liberty, The Empire Has No Clothes: U.S. Foreign Policy Exposed and Putting “Defense” Back into U.S. Defense Policy, as well as The Efficacy of Economic Sanctions as a Foreign Policy Tool. He is a contributor to numerous volumes and the author of 45 in-depth studies on national security issues. His articles have appeared in American Prospect, Arms Control Today, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Emory Law Journal, The Independent Review, Issues in Science and Technology (National Academy of Sciences), Mediterranean Quarterly, Middle East and International Review, Middle East Policy, Nexus, Chronicle of Higher Education, American Conservative, International Journal of World Peace, and Northwestern Journal of International Affairs. Dr. Eland’s popular writings have appeared in such publications as the Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, USA Today, Houston Chronicle, Dallas Morning News, New York Times, Chicago Sun-Times, San Diego Union-Tribune, Miami Herald, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Newsday, Sacramento Bee, Orange County Register, Washington Times, Providence Journal, The Hill, and Defense News. He has appeared on ABC’s World News Tonight,  NPR’s Talk of the Nation,  PBS, Fox News Channel, CNBC, Bloomberg TV, CNN, CNN Crossfire,  CNN-fn, C-SPAN, MSNBC, Canadian Broadcasting Corp. (CBC), Canadian TV (CTV), Radio Free Europe, Voice of America, BBC, and other local, national, and international TV and radio programs.

Allison Bricker

SPRINGFIELD, VIRGINIA – Representative Ron Paul’s Campaign for Liberty (C4L), formed after his 2008 Presidential Campaign so as to continue advocating the message of limited Constitutional government, has launched a new push to stop H.R. 2454: American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009. Hoping to build on the successful effort to secure an Audit of the FEDERAL RESERVE, albeit the FOMC and international transactions are still protected from view, C4L now focuses on creating a groundswell to stop the insidious scheme by Corporatists in government to create a ”cap and trade” framework.

If passed and signed into law, the system will solely benefit the largest of companies thus further consolidating their power while simultaneously stifling competition, which of course is the number one sin in the mind of the Corporatist.

Austrian Market analysts estimate that should the bill pass the Senate, we as individuals could see approximately six-hundred and fifty billion in new taxes and caution that such a boondoggle will also prevent the creation of new jobs from upstart companies on Main Street while further insulating Wall Street’s corporation from bearing any form of pressure by the market whatsoever.

Thus, the Corporatists know that such a system should it be proposed voluntarily would suffer a complete failure before it even began due the enormous barriers raised for new and small business, and therefore must rely on the FORCE of government in order to corner the energy market.

As such, C4L has launched an email blitz of its existing members and has created a website, where individuals can consent to sending a letter to both of their Federal Senators. The draft letter goes on to formally request that their Senators vote against both HR 2454 as well as any future efforts at a Cap and Trade scheme, and even goes so far as to urge the Senators to wage a filibuster if needed so as to kill the bill prior to a final vote.

Source(s): Campaign for Liberty, Stop Cap and Tax • Mises Institute, “The Costs of Carbon Legislation” by Robert P. Murphy Published June 01, 2009 • Government Printing Office Online Document Depository, H.R. 2454 • The Washinton Post, “Tilting at Green Windmills” By George F. Will, Published Thursday, June 25, 2009

Allison Bricker

RIVERSIDE, CALIFORNIA – As the Straussian Neo-Conservatives once again fire up the war drums in hopes of dragging this nation into yet a 3rd war in the Middle-East, they look to relegate the complex technological difference between civilian and military-grade nuclear programs to secondary status in favor of their brand of over-masculinized nationalism to achieve their Imperial end.

However, unlike during the run up to war with Iraq, beginning publicly in earnest during the fall of 2002, many  have awoke to the message of Dr. Ron Paul’s 2008 Presidential campaign and are instead turning to the independent new-media in lieu of the corporate-controlled talking heads of network and cable news.

Further, those of us looking to promote a humble foreign policy as envisioned and espoused by the Founding Generation, also have a most articulate advocate thereof in one Mr. Scott Horton. Mr. Horton is an intellectual powerhouse countering each and everyone of the Neo-Conservative Warmonger’s empty, yet emotionally charged rhetoric with facts, reason, and more facts, utterly undercutting the warmonger’s chest-thumping.

This past April, the University of California at Riverside impaneled a discussion group consisting of Reese Erlich, Mr. Horton, Larry Greenfield, and Christopher Records for their discussion entitled, “Obama’s challenge: Iran, Nuclear Weapons & the Mideast” The full debate runs two-and-one-half hours, however the playlist below also includes the individual segments of Mr. Horton and Mr. Erlich. (to skip to the next segment, click the button to the right of the Play button)

Scott Horton – Radio Host, Liberty Radio network, KAOS 95.9, and KUCR 88.3
	Scott Horton, assistant editor for Antiwar.com and host of Antiwar Radio for the Liberty Radio Network, KAOS Radio 95.9 FM in Austin, Texas and KUCR 88.3 in Riverside, California.

Allison Bricker

Dr. Paul Cites Growing Momentum to Abolish Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, but will government make Smaller Banks Act as New Proxy?

In his weekly Texas Straight Talk address, Representative Ron Paul discusses the growing momentum to abolish Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Nevertheless, Dr. Paul points out that this would be only the first step to allowing the housing market to normalize and that unless the people speak up, the Central Authority will merely seek to put indenture smaller banks to act as proxy agents to continued government backing of mortgage loans regardless of the borrowers ability to repay. [TRANSCRIPT]

Related Material(s)
	Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
	Representative Ron Paul Texas Straight Talk for August 23rd, 2010 _TRANSCRIPT (PDF 252kb)

Allison Bricker

GOP Enlists Robotic Talking Representative to Repeat 1988 Mantra of No “New” Taxes in hopes of Taking Back Congress…

Newly elected Congressional Representative Charles Djou pays lip-service to the growing dissatisfaction with “both” political parties, out of control spending in Washington D.C., and the ramifications of offsetting massive government deficit spending via tax increases. His solution of course is to put Republicans back in control of Congress; so the soap-opera of Red Sox v. Yankees may continue while the Republic goes down the drain. [TRANSCRIPT]

Related Material(s)
	GOP Weekly Remarks by Rep. Charles Djou (HI-1) Cut Spending No New Taxes – TRANSCRIPT (PDF 260kb)

Source(s): House Republican Conference YouTube Channel