The Freedom Bulletin

Over the weekend, Ron Paul’s supporters won at Republican state conventions in Maine and Nevada. In Maine, pro-Paul delegates won 18 of 24 slots, and in Nevada, they won 22 of 25. Similarly to what happened in Massachusetts, 20 of the Nevada delegates are still bound to vote for Romney on the first round of ballots to reflect the portion of votes that he received in that state’s caucuses in February. But that’s not the case with Maine, whose straw poll earlier this year was non-binding.

Paul’s delegate count is now at 93, a seemingly paltry sum compared to Romney’s 865. But, as Peter Grier at the Christian Science Monitor explains, there are still ways that Paul and his supporters could have a big impact at the Republican National Convention.

Photo by Gage Skidmore

Although the Republican presidential candidate is presumably Mitt Romney, that hasn’t stopped Ron Paul supporters from scoring some victories. Massachusetts held its Republican caucuses over the weekend, and in many districts, well-organized Paul supporters secured victory for their slates of delegates (known as the Reagan Unity Liberty Slate), ousting the pro-Romney delegates. In total, the Reagan Unity Liberty Slate won 17 out of 27 available slots.

The delegates will head to the Republican National Convention in Florida this summer, where they will be required to vote for Romney on the first round of ballots because he won the state’s popular vote, but where they will still have a chance to influence the party’s platform and choice of vice-presidential candidate, and to support whomever they like if voting goes to a second round. Garrett Quinn blogs that Paul’s caucus victories don’t have much practical significance. But they are victories nonetheless, and a sign that the liberty movement is very much alive and kicking.

Seamus Light described his experience at District 1′s caucus, and the New American has a good recap of Paul’s victories in Massachusetts, as well as Louisiana and Alaska, as he continues his campaign against the status quo. Rob Eno also wrote a great post at Red Mass Group explaining why Saturday’s caucuses were a great day for the Massachusetts Republican Party.

Photo by Paul Weiskel

There has been something of a brouhaha, in the Boston area at least, about the above picture, showing a confrontation between a police officer and an Occupy Boston member who was protesting against the Massachusetts Tea Party Coalition‘s tax day rally. For a cop to grab someone by the neck seems extreme at first. But when you think about what the protesters were doing, it actually doesn’t seem too unreasonable.

There is a difference between voicing your views and preventing anyone who disagrees with you from voicing theirs. I am all for protesting – holding up signs, chanting, circulating petitions, holding sit-ins, etc. But I am not in favor of protests that are so disruptive that they effectively take away the freedom of speech of the people they are protesting. I admit that I did not attend this year’s Tea Party rally. And I admit that this is a fine distinction. But judging by photos, videos, and news reports, I think the anti-tea-party protesters were on the wrong side of it. They certainly were last year, when they pushed their way between the audience and the stage and held up signs and banners to deliberately block our view of the speakers that we had gathered to watch. Contrast this with a protest that I was a part of, against President Obama’s visit to Northeastern University to support Martha Coakley’s senate campaign in 2010. We lined the streets, held up signs, chanted, and marched around, but we did not, for example, burst into the hall where Obama was speaking, drown out his words, or hold up signs blocking his face.

This is not just about keeping order, it is about protecting the freedom of speech of minorities against a majority who would drown them out. And in Boston, conservatives are certainly a minority. It is heartening that the Boston Police acted to protect the rights of Tea Party activists to hold a rally in a political climate where their views are unpopular among the majority of people.

Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) announced today that she will resign from Congress to focus on her recovery from the head injury she suffered in a shooting rampage just over a year ago. The Freedom Bulletin would like to wish her the very best in her recovery and her future career, whatever shape it may take.

Photo by Gage Skidmore

Ron Paul took a break from the campaign trail this week to introduce and speak on the House floor about a piece of legislation to repeal section 1021 of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). This provision allows the government to indefinitely detain, without trial, people who allegedly “substantially supported al Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States.” President Obama wrote in a signing statement that he would not use this law against U.S. citizens, but the bill’s vague language makes it possible that it could indeed be used against U.S. citizens one day.

Paul said that Section 1021 “provides for the possibility of the U.S. military acting as a kind of police force on U.S. soil, apprehending terror suspects, including Americans, and whisking them off to an undisclosed location indefinitely … Sadly, too many of my colleagues are too willing to undermine our constitution to support such outrageous legislation.”

Thank you Congressman Paul for fighting for liberty both on in the presidential campaign and in Congress!

OK that might be a little bit of an exaggeration. But this is truly a night that all Ron Paul supporters, and supporters of liberty in general, should enjoy. Ron Paul had a strong second-place finish to Mitt Romney in the New Hampshire primary, coming in with 23% of the vote to Romney’s 39%. He gave a magnificent victory speech (watch on Fox, YouTube, or above) and issued a press release calling on all of the other candidates to drop out and unite against Romney. “President Paul,” as he was anointed by chanting crowds, is even trending on Twitter. It might seem strange to consider second place a victory, but if you think about this time four years ago, when Paul was running solely to publicize his libertarian ideas, to gain such a significant share of the vote, beating Jon Huntsman, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, and Rick Perry, is quite a victory indeed. And to see his genuinely happy reaction warms my heart. All hail President Paul!

Highlights from Paul’s speech in case you don’t want to watch the whole thing:

• “I’d like to thank the Union Leader…for not endorsing me!”
• “He (Romney) has had a victory but we have had a victory for the cause of liberty tonight!”
• “I think that the intellectual revolution that’s going on in this country to restore liberty is well on its way, and there is no way that they are going to stop the momentum that we have started.”
• “I sort of have to chuckle when they describe you and me as being dangerous. That’s one thing they are telling the truth, because we are dangerous to the status quo of this country.”
• “What should the role of government be in a free society? The role should be very simple: the protection of liberty!”
• (Crowd chants: Ron Paul revolution, we respect the Constitution!) “Wonderful, wonderful!”
• “You know, the Constitution was written for a very precise manner. It was not designed to restrain the individual…but to protect your liberties and to restrain the federal government. Liberty has to be re-emphasized because we’ve been careless over the last 100 hundred years, we’ve taken liberty and chopped it up into pieces. Some people think liberty has to do with personal habits, which I agree. Other people think liberty is how to spend your money, and they defend that part and then they fight about when to do what. I think what we need to do, is make this emphasis that liberty means you have a right to your life and your privacy and the way you want to live your life as long as you don’t hurt people, and you have a right to keep and spend your money as you want to.”
• “Freedom is a wonderful idea and that’s why I get so excited, but I really get excited when I see young people saying it; it is a wonderful idea. Freedom is popular, don’t you know that? Freedom brings people together. I think it’s magnificent that the crowds that have come out over the weeks and months have been very diverse, because it should be, because some people want their freedom to practice their religion in one way, maybe another way, some might not even want to practice it at all. But freedom if you understand it, you should all fight for freedom, because you want to exert your freedom the way you want.”
• “They say, how are you gonna compromise and give up some of your beliefs in order to get some things passed? You don’t have to compromise, what you have to do is emphasize the coalitions that people want their freedoms for different reasons, and bring them together.”
• “We’re well on our way… I always assumed that the best I could do is set a record. I didn’t know you were out there. But it’s no longer that irate, tireless minority that is stirring up the troops. Now that irate minority, and so tireless as you have been, it’s growing by leaps and bounds, it’s going to continue to grow by leaps and bounds, and we will restore freedom to this country.”

Photo by Gage Skidmore

At yesterday’s Republican presidential debate in New Hampshire, America got to see Ron Paul more assertive than ever before. He was asked almost all negative questions – asked to justify his previous criticism of Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich, questioned on 20-year-old newsletters that he did not write, challenged on his comments about running as a third-party candidate, and attacked on his foreign policy. And that was just by the moderators. He started out a little shaky but got better as the debate went on.

My favorite moments from last night’s and this morning’s debates:

During an exchange over Paul’s comments that Newt Gingrich was a “chickenhawk” for advocating war while never having served in the military himself, Gingrich said that he did not go to war because he was married with a child. (As a single person I found this remark slightly offensive. Are single people’s lives less valuable than married people’s, so it’s not as objectionable for them to be sent off to war?)  ”When I was drafted, I was married and had two kids and I went,” Paul retorted.

When challenged about some allegedly racist newsletters bearing his name, he gave a perfect response. “One of my heroes is Martin Luther King because he practiced the libertarian principle of peaceful resistance and peaceful civil disobedience, as did Rosa Parks… I’m the only one up here… who understands true racism in this country is in the judicial system, and it has to do with enforcing the drug laws. Look at the percentages. The percentage of people who use drugs are about the same with blacks and whites. And yet the blacks are arrested way disproportionately. They’re prosecuted and imprisoned way disproportionately. They get the death penalty way disproportionately. How many times have you seen a white rich person get the electric chair or get, you know, execution?”

After being interrupted during his first couple of questions, Paul said sternly, “Do not interrupt me.”

At one point, Paul cheerfully and charmingly proclaimed, “I’m doing pretty well. Catching up to Mitt every single day.”

In this morning’s debate, when asked about the fact that only one of his bills has passed during his 20 years in Congress, Paul replied, “That demonstrates how out of touch the U.S. government and U.S. Congress is with the American people.” Right on. Candidates should be judged on the quality of their ideas, not the ideas of the people they happen to work with. If the other people in Congress don’t agree with Paul’s ideas of liberty, that reflects badly on them, not Paul.

When speaking about entitlements, Paul also gave a fantastic defense of his supposed opposition to minority rights: “Entitlements are not rights. Rights mean you have a right to your life, you have a right to your liberty, and you should have a  right to keep the fruits of your labor. And this is quite a big difference, but earlier on there was a little discussion here about gay rights. I, in a way, don’t like to use those terms, gay rights, women’s rights, minority rights, religious rights. There’s only one type of right. It’s your right to your liberty. And I think it does cause divisiveness when we see people in groups, because for too long we punish groups, so the answer then was let’s relieve them by giving them affirmative action. So I think both are wrong. If you think in terms of individuals, to protect every single individual, no they’re not entitled. One group isn’t entitled to take something from somebody else.”

Check out some more highlights from the International Business Times. Also, Andrew Sullivan at the Daily Beast live-blogged the debate, and even though he comes off as a bit left-wing on some issues, he even said, ”I find the notion that Ron Paul is a racist to be preposterous.”