Free Republic

Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul on Friday flatly denied a Washington Post report that he was deeply involved in the company that produced provocative, racially charged newsletters and that he signed off on articles. The newsletters from the 1990s have dogged Paul for years, resurfacing as his presidential campaign gained momentum. The Texas congressman has denied writing the inflammatory passages — the articles included racial, anti-Semitic and anti-gay content — and said that he didn't read them at the time or for years afterward.

Republican presidential contender Ron Paul has been fielding questions about his controversial newsletters for years. While their troubling contents first came to light during the 2008 presidential campaign, the embarrassing newsletters have gained increasing attention over the past two months. As you’ll recall, many of the issues, published in the 1980s and 1990s, contained troubling comments about Israel, African Americans, homosexuals and AIDS, among other subjects.It seems the controversy over the newsletters, though, is nowhere near over, as The New Republic has just released a new batch of questionable newsletters that are sure to nab attention. Like the former passages...

(FOX19) - I told you Wednesday night that in 2007 the New Republic magazine published copies of the Ron Paul Report, Ron Paul Strategy Guide, etc. In those newsletters were some passages that could be deemed racist and certainly inappropriate. I also pointed out that the author of those articles, James Kirchick, mentions that none of the racist newsletters have a byline, except for one. The only problem, back in 2007, he did not disclose the name of that writer or which edition he or she wrote, until today. For the first time, I am going to share with you...

As his ascent grows increasingly questionable in light of scrutiny of his foreign policy stances and several-decade-old newsletters, it appears the questions about the latter have become inescapable for Rep. Ron Paul, even from garden variety political enthusiasts. Rep. Paul appeared today on Iowa’s WHO-AM with host Jan Mickelson and had to confront repeated questions on how it was possible for him not to know the content of his newsletter. The caller initially asked, simply, how confident Rep. Paul was that the newsletters– not released while Rep. Paul was in Congress, but in the interim between his initial term and...

At a rally yesterday I asked Ron Paul, How confident were you at the time, that the Ron Paul newsletters from the mid 1980s to the mid 1990s accurately portrayed your views on monetary policy, the 2nd Amendment, the 10th Amendment, personal liberty, limited government, lower taxes, and staying out of needless wars?”He refused to answer. He cannot answer. He has painted himself into a corner. If he answers that he was confident, then... If he claims that he trusted the writers... Either way this would be a bad answer. He would appear silly if he claims, however, that he...

Many voices whose accomplishments I otherwise respect think that the fact Ron Paul had associates who, for a brief period over a decade in the past, wrote some mean-spirited, nasty, and dumb stuff rooted in race and sexual orientation under his name is the most important thing to discuss about Ron Paul, and that the public condemnation and humiliation of those supposedly responsible is the most important public policy issue surrounding Paul's campaign now.Part of this seems to be based on a so-far completely imagined belief that this particular repetition of the newsletter story cycle is somehow destroying Ron...

Has Ron Paul committed the unpardonable sin?It is no secret that in politics the infamous “race card” trumps all. We have seen it used time after time. Most recently it has been used by Eric Holder to answer the question (at least in his own mind) as to why there is such a resounding cry for his resignation or impeachment. Before him was Jeremiah Wright who so eloquently told his church that Obama would make a better president because Hillary Clinton didn’t know what it was like to be a black man in a society run by rich white people....

"I did not have sexual relations with that woman" arrives at "I did not read those newsletters with my name on them."Let me get this straight. Twenty years ago someone put some crazy, racist stuff in newsletters bearing Ron Paul’s name and written in the first person as if they were from Ron Paul. Ron Paul never read them. Ten years ago, when confronted with some of the crazy stuff (I’m trying really hard not to use “crazy s**t” here), Ron Paul says he wrote them, but they must be taken in their whole context to understand them. Fast forward...

So as Ron Paul is on track to win the Iowa caucuses, he is getting a new dose of press scrutiny. And the press is focusing on the newsletters that went out under his name in the late 1980s and early 1990s. They were called the Ron Paul's Political Report, Ron Paul's Freedom Report, the Ron Paul Survival Report and the Ron Paul Investment Letter. There is no doubt that the newsletters contained utterly racist statements. Some choice quotes: * "Given the inefficiencies of what DC laughingly calls the criminal justice system, I think we can safely assume that 95...

Isn't it interesting that some of the most significant 'revolutions' of the last twenty years have all had to do with writing? How retro is that? First we had email, then webpages, then mobile phone texting, and now blogs. All this reflects a trend whereby the world is becoming more formal in how it communicates. Instead of body language and endless conversations, communication has shifted towards endless words on a screen. Bloggers are people with attitude. They say there's a book inside everybody. Well, the Web and blogs have let the book out! There has literally been an explosion of...