The Freedom Bulletin

This is just a short post to congratulate South Carolina’s new congressman-elect, Mark Sanford. Although he’s obviously not a perfect person, I am glad that the voters gave him a second chance. Endorsed by both Ron and Rand Paul, Sanford, a Republican is a greater advocate of fiscal conservatism and individual liberty than his rival, Democrat Elizabeth Colbert Busch. Additionally, as strange as this may sound, I agree with publisher Larry Flynt who also endorsed Sanford, saying, “His open embrace of his mistress in the name of love, breaking his sacred marriage vows, was an act of bravery.” Although it wasn’t right of Sanford to use government funds to visit his mistress, Maria Belen Chapur, or to lie about it, it was brave of him to eventually tell the truth about what happened, and to leave a marriage that was not making him happy.

Another reason why I’m glad Sanford won is because he is an underdog. Not only did his scandalous personal life put him at a disadvantage with voters, but his ex-wife decided to report him to the police for trespassing when he went to her house to watch the Super Bowl with his son. As a result of this, the National Republican Congressional Committee abruptly stopped funding his campaign. Sanford was outspent by Busch’s campaign, as well as the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and House Majority PAC. Plus, Busch was even listed on the ballot twice, under both the Democratic and Working Families parties.

Sanford will soon begin his term in Congress and is planning to marry Chapur, whom he has called his “soul mate.” I hope that both of these things work out for him.

Although I’m planning to vote for a Republican in the U.S. Senate special election, I have to say that I admire Democratic candidate (and current congressman) Stephen Lynch for one thing: his vote against the Affordable Care Act, also known as ObamaCare.

Lynch opposes the law because it failed to include a public option, a government-run insurance plan that may have been a desirable and affordable option for many people, while including something that harms individuals and benefits only insurance companies, the individual mandate that everyone purchase health insurance. At a recent debate he said, “What the insurance companies wanted, they wanted 31 million new customers. We gave them everything they wanted. It was like a hostage situation where we not only paid the ransom, but we let the insurance companies keep the hostages.”

Jeff Jacoby at the Boston Globe wrote an excellent column on the subject, in which he explains as follows:

He was the sole member of the Massachusetts delegation to oppose the bill, and he did so in the face of personal entreaties by President Obama, by then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and even by the widow of Senator Ted Kennedy, who had died just a few months earlier. He did so even though it angered many of his labor-union allies, and despite the president’s enormous popularity in Massachusetts. In the end Lynch was one of just 34 Democrats in Congress – and the only one in New England – to vote no.

Before long he was facing a serious re-election challenge within his own party, the first since he was elected to the House a decade earlier. (The Boston Globe, which had warned Lynch against making “a grievous error” by voting no on ObamaCare, endorsed his opponent in the Democratic primary that fall.) Now, as Lynch and fellow Representative Ed Markey – who says passing the health law was “one of the most important votes of my career” – compete for their party’s nomination in the Senate race, that 2010 vote is back in the spotlight.

What do you call it when a congressman opposes a bill it would be far easier to support, infuriating much of his political base and putting his electoral prospects at risk? Richard Kirsch, a key strategist for the progressive coalition that spent $47 million to get ObamaCare passed, has been calling it “cowardice.” I do not think that word means what he thinks it means.

I agree wholeheartedly. Many people may disagree with Lynch’s position, but only someone who doesn’t understand English could call it cowardice. Taking an unpopular position that results in criticism and puts you at odds with your friends, allies, constituents, the media, the public, the leaders of your party, the President of the United States, and the grieving widow of a widely loved and admired senator is the very opposite of cowardice. No matter what you think of ObamaCare, you have to admit that Lynch’s vote was courageous.

Following in the tradition of his father, Ron Paul, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) won the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) straw poll this weekend. He received 25% of the votes, defeating 22 other high-profile Republicans, including Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) (2nd place) and former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) (3rd place). (Ron won the same poll in 2010 and 2011.) Rand also gave a wonderful speech, which you can watch above or on YouTube.

My favorite part of his speech were the closing lines, which went as follows: “Our party is encumbered by an inconsistent approach to freedom. The new GOP will need to embrace liberty in both the economic and the personal sphere. If we’re gonna have a Republican Party that can win, liberty needs to be the backbone of the GOP. We must have a message that is broad, our vision must be broad, and that vision must be based on freedom. There are millions of Americans, young and old, native and immigrant, black, white, and brown, who simply seek to live free to practice their religion, free to choose where their kids go to school, free to choose their own healthcare, free to keep the fruits of their labor, free to live without government constantly being on their back. I will stand for them. I will stand for you. I will stand for our prosperity and our freedom, and I ask everyone who values liberty to stand with me.”

Image credit: Gage Skidmore

As you know by now unless you’ve been living under a rock, Sen. Rand Paul (R-TX) filibustered almost all day today. He is blocking the Senate from voting on President Obama’s appointment of John Brennan as director of the CIA, in protest against the Obama administration’s policy on drone strikes against American citizens. He offered to stop if Obama or Attorney General Eric Holder officially stated that they would not use drones to kill U.S. citizens on U.S. soil. But they did not, so on he went. Starting at 11:47 a.m. and still going strong at the time of posting, Sen. Paul spoke all about the Bill of Rights and the principle of due process. He (or his aides) also live-tweeted the speech. He received support from Senators John Barrasso (R-WY), Saxby Chambliss (R-GA), John Cornyn (R-TX), Ted Cruz (R-TX), Mark Kirk (R-IL), Mike Lee (R-UT), Jerry Moran (R-KS), Marco Rubio (R-FL), Pat Toomey (R-PA), and Ron Wyden (D-OR). Although Brennan is still likely to be confirmed eventually, Sen. Paul most certainly achieved his goal of bringing attention to the cause of freedom and the possibility of extrajudicial assassinations of American citizens. 

Didn’t have time to watch the whole speech? Here are some of the best quotes from it:

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In his inaugural address, President Obama urged Americans to work together to fulfill our nation’s ideals, even though we may not agree on everything and our collective decisions may not be perfect. One line that stood out to me was, “We cannot mistake absolutism for principle, or substitute spectacle for politics, or treat name-calling as reasoned debate.”

Although the latter two are pretty reasonable, I have to disagree with the idea that absolutism is a bad thing.

According to Dictionary.com, absolutism is “any theory holding that values, principles, etc., are absolute and not relative, dependent, or changeable.” In other words, absolutism is when you have principles that you believe in, and you don’t give them up or cease believing in them, no matter what. This is the opposite of relativism, which is “the doctrine that no ideas or beliefs are universally true but that all are, instead, ‘relative’ — that is, their validity depends on the circumstances in which they are applied.”

Personally, I consider myself an absolutist. I believe in the principle of liberty; in other words that people have a right to life their lives any way they wish, as long as they are not violating the rights of others to do the same. And I don’t believe this principle should be abandoned or compromised in any way, even if compromising it would be popular, would make people safer, or would reduce the risk of something bad happening. In a way, absolutism is the same thing as principle. So although a lot of the ideas in Obama’s speech made sense, there’s no need to give absolutism a bad name.

You can read the full text of Obama’s inaugural address here.

Last week the House of Representatives passed a $60 billion aid package for victims of Hurricane Sandy. The first $9 billion were passed, 354 to 67, on Friday, January 4, and the remaining $51 million were passed, 241 to 180, on Tuesday, January 15. Many Congressmen voted against the bill because it included pork and did not include accompanying cuts to the federal budget, a very reasonable decision in my opinion, considering that America has over $16 trillion in debt and therefore needs to drastically cut spending.

However, this did not stop Rep. Peter King (R-NY) from calling these sensible, fiscally conservative Congressmen “disgraceful” and in need of a “hypocrites conference.”

It did not stop New Jersey Governor Chris Christie from calling them “disgusting.”

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This and other photos in this post by Gage Skidmore

On Thursday, January 3, the newly-elected members of Congress were sworn in. Of course, that also means that the terms of the incumbent members of Congress came to an end. And that includes my favorite Congressman, Ron Paul (R-TX), who is now officially retired. To mark the occasion, I thought I would do a recap of his long and illustrious career. Here is my tribute to Ron Paul.

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