Free Republic

A new op-ed prompted by his interview with ABC over the weekend, which generated headlines like, “Rand Paul: Don’t dismiss containment option for nuclear Iran.”He’s not for containment, he now says, but nor is he irrevocably against it. What he’s for is strategic ambiguity, not telegraphing your intentions towards a bad actor lest you inadvertently limit your options later. Does America have any recent experience with that? I am not for containment in Iran. Let me repeat that, since no one seems to be listening closely: I am unequivocally not for containing Iran.I am also not for announcing that the...

FROM THE 'DEMOCRATIC UNDERGROUND': A new low for the far left: a post titled, "Why I Hope the Bloodshed Continues in Iraq." I kid you not.  DEMOCRATIC UNDERGROUND DECIDES TO EDIT: Hmmm. After I linked to a truly hideous posting celebrating bloodshed in Iraq, they take the page down. I should have copied the page. First CBS. Now DU. Shine a light on them and they scram. - 11:42:12 AM  THE POST: Here's what Democratic Underground didn't want you to see: I Hope the Bloodshed Continues in IraqWell, that should bring the bats out of the attic with fangs dripping....

U.S. Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) was one of only four House Republicans to break rank from the party and request earmarks despite a Republican Conference earmark moratorium. Paul sent 41 earmark requests totaling $157,093,544 for the 2011 Fiscal Year. His largest single request was $19,500,000 for a naval training ship at the Texas Maritime Academy in Galveston, followed by a $18,126,000 to provide maintenance on the Matagorda Ship Channel. For Fiscal Year 2010, Paul requested 54 total earmarks, adding up to $398,460,640 in pork that the former presidential candidate sought to bring home to his district. These requests were made...

Ron Paul, the Texas congressman who is the darling of the Libertarian Right, has more earmarks in the pork-laden $410-billion spending bill than any other Republican. That's not according to the MSM, or the liberal blogosphere. That's what Fox News is reporting. In an interview Tuesday night with Fox News' Neil Cavuto, Paul not only defended his own earmarks, he argued that every penny in the federal budget should be earmarked, to improve transparency. Paul, a fiscal watchdog who said he voted against the bill because he believes federal spending is out of control, acknowledged that $73 million in the...

Lately many have characterized this administration as socialist, or having strong socialist leanings. I differ with this characterization. This is not to say Mr. Obama believes in free-markets by any means. On the contrary, he has done and said much that demonstrates his fundamental misunderstanding and hostility towards the truly free market. But a closer, honest examination of his policies and actions in office reveals that, much like the previous administration, he is very much a corporatist. This in many ways can be more insidious and worse than being an outright socialist. Socialism is a system where the government directly...

Lately many have characterized this administration as socialist, or having strong socialist leanings. I differ with this characterization. This is not to say Mr. Obama believes in free-markets by any means. On the contrary, he has done and said much that demonstrates his fundamental misunderstanding and hostility towards the truly free market. But a closer, honest examination of his policies and actions in office reveals that, much like the previous administration, he is very much a corporatist. This in many ways can be more insidious and worse than being an outright socialist. Socialism is a system where the government directly...

“The question has been raised about whether or not our president is a socialist,” Paul said. “I am sure there are some people here who believe it. But in the technical sense, in the economic definition of a what a socialist is, no, he’s not a socialist.” “He’s a corporatist,” Paul continued. “And unfortunately we have corporatists inside the Republican party and that means you take care of corporations and corporations take over and run the country.” Paul said examples of President Obama’s “corporatism” were evident in the heath care reform bill he signed into law last month. He said...

Ron Paul: Barack Obama is Not a Socialist NEW ORLEANS–Republicans and tea party activists are fond of accusing President Barack Obama of being a socialist, but today party gadfly Ron Paul said they had it wrong. “In the technical sense, in the economic definition, he is not a socialist,” the Texas Republican said to a smattering of applause at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference. “He’s a corporatist,” Paul quickly added, meaning the president takes “care of corporations and corporations take over and run the country.”

Former Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul has recorded a YouTube video warning libertarian-minded Americans that Barack Obama's inaugural address amounted to an effort to camouflage his big government ambitions. "If you are honest with oneself," said Paul, "you have to say, 'I'm for more government.' Or: 'I'm for less government.' But he would like to avoid trying to be blunt and saying, 'I'm for a lot more government.'" Watch it here. Paul, a Texas congressman who raised $35 million during last year's presidential run, says that if Obama's views on government are not "socialism," they are "fascistic." During Tuesday's inaugural...

Por favor disculpen mi Espanol. Como creCI en Houston -es un poco ‘espanglish y un poco Tex Mex. I lived, worked, played and grew up alongside Latinos. As a teenager I worked alongside immigrants mowing lawns and putting in landscaping around businesses. I remember once asking one of the immigrant workers how much he was being paid. “Cuanto le Pagan por el trabajo? He responded “tres dolars.” I responded, “Yo tambien. Tres Dolars, por hora . . . ?” He shook shook his head, “No tres Dolars, por dia!” At a young age, I came to understand that it makes...

WASHINGTON — Sen. Rand Paul is calling for conservatives to embrace the cause of immigration reform, outlining a proposal that would grant some form of legal status to the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants after the federal government has certified that the border is secure. Paul’s proposal, outlined in a speech to the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce in Washington on Tuesday, carefully avoided the term citizenship. Instead, the Kentucky senator said he sought a middle ground that would include a multi-year process of granting visas to undocumented workers that would hinge on the annual verification of the security of the...

The Republican Party needs to broaden its appeal by softening its edge on some volatile social issues and altering its image as the party always seemingly "eager to go to war," U.S. Sen. Rand Paul told hundreds of Greater Cincinnati Republicans Saturday. "We do need to expand the party and grow the party and that does mean that we don't always all agree on every issue," the Kentucky Republican said at the Northeast Hamilton County Republican Club's annual pancake breakfast at the Sharonville Convention Center. To help the party rebound from two successive losses in presidential races, Republicans must find...

Sen. Rand Paul is hammering his fellow senators for keeping billions in financial aid flowing to Egypt's military -- even as Cairo's security forces massacre anti-government activists. "This is something that those who voted in Congress are going to have to live with," Paul told The Cable on Thursday. "The question is: How does their conscience feel now as they see photographs of tanks rolling over Egyptian civilians?" As the official Egyptian death toll climbs to 638, the legislation the Kentucky libertarian is referring to was an amendment to suspend aid to Egypt until the country holds free and fair...

Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) went after fellow Republican Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) and President Barack Obama on This Week With George Stephanopoulos sunday morning, telling ABC’s Jonathan Karl that Obama’s “five years of weakness” had emboldened Putin and that the U.S. needed to defend its values across the globe, in contrast to Paul’s less-interventionist foreign policy. “I’m a big fan of Rand Paul,” Cruz said, “but I don’t agree with him on foreign policy. I think U.S. leadership is critical in the world. I agree with him that we should be very reluctant to deploy military force abroad. But...

In what may have been his most significant foreign policy speech to date, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) on Thursday positioned his Reaganesque foreign policy views between the hawkish Sen. John McCain's (R-AZ) and what he described as the dovish Sen. Rand Paul's (R-KY), while blasting President Barack Obama as a fool on the international stage. Speaking at the second annual Uninvited II national security forum across the street from the Conservative Political Action Convention, Cruz brutally mocked the Obama administration's description of Russia's invasion of Ukraine as an "uncontested arrival." He called this yet another example of Obama's "tortured semantics" which...

President Reagan was holding a meeting in the Cabinet Room on March 25, 1985, when Press Secretary Larry Speakes came over to me, as communications director, with a concern. The White House was about to issue a statement on the killing of Major Arthur Nicholson, a U.S. army officer serving in East Germany. Maj. Nicholson had been shot in cold blood by a Russian soldier. Speakes thought the president's statement, "This violence was unjustified," was weak. I agreed. We interrupted the president, who reread the statement, then said go ahead with it. What lay behind this Reagan decision not to...

“Every Republican likes to think he or she is the next Ronald Reagan,” he wrote in an op-ed for Breitbart News, responding to an attack by Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz. “Some who say this do so for lack of their own ideas and agenda. Reagan was a great leader and President. But too often people make him into something he wasn’t in order to serve their own political purposes.”“[A]lmost all of us in the party are big fans of Ronald Reagan,” Paul told Sean Hannity on Fox News in yet another defense of his foreign policy. “I’ve always been a big fan...

(NEW YORK) -- It may be the opening salvo of the 2016 Republican primary. During an exclusive interview with ABC News’ Jonathan Karl for This Week, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, called Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., a friend, but drew a distinction between himself and the Kentucky senator on foreign policy, saying the U.S. “has a responsibility to defend our values.” “I’m a big fan of Rand Paul. He and I are good friends. But I don’t agree with him on foreign policy,” Cruz said. “I think U.S. leadership is critical in the world. And I agree with him that...

Former Rep. Ron Paul says that America’s reaction to Crimea’s vote to secede from Ukraine should be,“so what?” “Why does the U.S. care which flag will be hoisted on a small piece of land thousands of miles away?” the Texas Republican and libertarian icon wrote in a USA Today op-ed Monday. ...Over the weekend, Crimeans voted to secede from Ukraine and join Russia,which the Russian government has moved to approve. American politicians have called the vote a sham and the administration has said it does not recognize the results of the vote,placing sanctions on some Russian officials in response. Ron...

In a Breitbart column insisting that Ronald Reagan was not as assertive as commonly believed on military and foreign policy issues, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) mentions, in passing, “I met Ronald Reagan as a teenager when my father was a Reagan delegate in 1976.” . But his father, Ron Paul, is hardly a Reaganite today. Indeed, he is now claiming that Crimea has a right to leave Ukraine and join Russia, and that U.S. sanctions against the Russian regime are “criminal.” “That’s just people looking to start a war,” Paul said. “This is criminal, it’s stealing and will just aggravate...