PART ONE:

PART TWO:

PART THREE:

PART FOUR:

PART FIVE:

PART SIX:

Ventura made a few mistatements throughout the course of the interview, not the least of which is that Dick Cheney is Vice President and not Secretary of Defense. Still, it’s kind of amusing to listen to an Independent go off on the Democratic and Republican parties and give an insider’s take on what Democrats and Republicans do to keep third party and Independent candidates off the ballot.

Also, the final segment has two Democratic Party hacks and two Republican Party hacks telling Ventura how much they admire his independence before reverting into their assigned role of sputtering out talking points on behalf of their preferred Democratic/Republican presidential candidate.

NOTE: Cross-posted at The Moderate Voice.

Dear friend,

I wanted to update you on my latest plans before news gets out. Today, I am announcing my plan to join the Libertarian Party, because the Democratic Party no longer represents my vision for our great country. I wanted my supporters to get this news first, because you have been the ones who have kept my campaign alive since I first declared my candidacy on April 17, 2006.

The fact is, the Democratic Party today is no longer the party of FDR. It is a party that continues to sustain war, the military-industrial complex and imperialism — all of which I find anathema to my views.

By and large, I have been repeatedly marginalized in both national debates and in media exposure by the Democratic leadership, which works in tandem with the corporate interests that control what we read and hear in the media.

I look forward to advancing my presidential candidacy within the Libertarian Party, which is considerably closer to my values, my foreign policy views and my domestic views.

Please take a moment to make your most generous donation to my presidential campaign today. $10, $20, $50 — whatever you feel you can afford.

I want to thank you all for your continued support.

Gratefully yours,
Mike

As an Independent with libertarian-liberal leanings, there’s something about a Democratic politician leaving his former party for the Libertarian Party that gives me a warm and toasty feeling deep inside.

Gravel has been far more outspoken against the Iraq War than any other the other Democratic candidates (with the possible exception of Dennis Kucinich) and has expressed libertarian leanings with regards to the War on Drugs and taxation (he has vowed to end the war on drugs as well as get rid of the IRS).

Still, the Libertarian Party might not be the best match for the former Senator from Alaska. For one thing, his embrace of FDR is not likely to be encouraging to the libertarian faithful, most of whom believe FDR did more to enlarge the size and scope of the federal government than any other president. Furthermore, his support for universal health care is also not likely to be popular among libertarians, who feel that the federal government has no Constitutional authority to involve itself in the business of medicine.

Yet, if the Libertarian Party leadership is unhappy with prospect of being associated with Gravel, it certainly isn’t showing it.

Shane Cory, Libertarian Party Executive Director had this to say of Gravels switching of parties:

We’re honored to have a former member of the United States Senate join our ranks…Senator Gravel has a sincere dedication to empowering the American people and eliminating the corrupting influence of the two major parties. His switch from the Democratic Party, as well as former Congressman Barr’s abandonment of the GOP, shows that the Libertarian Party is truly a big tent organization moving firmly in the direction of Liberty.

Even more interesting was the reaction of former Republican Congressman Bob Barr (of Clinton impeachment fame or infamy) who left the Republican Party for the Libertarian Party back in 2004:

It is a distinct honor to have another former member of Congress within the Libertarian Party…Just as Senator Gravel believes Democrats have lost touch with the American public, I too concluded Republicans had lost their core principles, and could no longer associate myself with the GOP. While coming from opposite sides of the aisle, Senator Gravel and I definitely agree on the fundamental need for systemic change in our political system, and that the only way we have of effecting that change is by supporting and working in the Libertarian Party, which is the only political party in America that consistently works in word and deed to maximize individual liberty and minimize government power.

President Bush’s embrace of bigger government conservatism has caused a number of Republicans to leave the GOP in favor of the Libertarian Party. One wonders if the prospect of a Barrack Obama presidency or particularly a Hillary Clinton presidency as well as a Democratic Congress that doesn’t have the stomach to end the Iraq War will cause more libertarian-minded Democrats to leave their party in favor of the Libertarian Party.

Other internet sites that discuss this story:

San Diego Union-Tribune’s Newsblog
New York Time’s The Caucus
Washington Post’s The Trail
Baltimore Sun’s The Swamp
CNN’s Political Ticker

The National Priorities Project explains how it calculates the cost of the war:

The Cost of Iraq War calculator was set to reach $456 billion September 30, 2007, the end of fiscal year 2007. As of October 1, 2007, it is ticking at the same rate, though Congress has not yet appropriated money for fiscal year 2008. The Cost of Iraq War calculator is occasionally reset based on new information and new allocations of funding and will be re-set depending on the decisions made by Congress.

The numbers include military and non-military spending, such as reconstruction. Spending only includes incremental costs, additional funds that are expended due to the war. For example, soldiers' regular pay is not included, but combat pay is included. Potential future costs, such as future medical care for soldiers and veterans wounded in the war, are not included. It is also not clear whether the current funding will cover all military wear and tear. It also does not account for the Iraq War being deficit-financed and that taxpayers will need to make additional interest payments on the national debt due to those deficits.

The media (and others) sometimes cite a figure that is in excess of our estimate. However, the number cited by the media may include not just the Iraq War, but the Afghanistan War and for enhanced security abroad. Our figure is only covering the cost of the Iraq War as it relates to the U.S. federal budget (and does not include costs to others or other countries or any economic impact costs to Americans).

This number is based on an analysis of the legislation in which Congress has allocated money for war so far and research by the Congressional Research Service (latest report) which has access to Department of Defense financial reports.

To get a better grasp on exactly how much this war is costing American taxpayers, consider this: at the current rate of spending, the war in Iraq is costing approximately:

$100 billion per year

$8.4 billion per month

$275 million per day

$11.5 million per hour

Yet, Ron Paul’s loyal supporters answered the call–putting together a grassroots effort to help their candidate meet this lofty goal. Help in this endeavor came from a most unlikely source—Trevor Lyman, a musician and internet entrepreneur who had never voted in a presidential election and had not even met Congressman Ron Paul. Lyman spearheaded the This November 5th internet fundraising campaign that netted the maverick congressman an impressive $4.3 million on November 5th. Lyman has also spurred today’s internet campaign, which takes place on the 234th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party.

As of 7:00 PM EST, Ron Paul has managed to rake in an impressive $4.4 million, eclipsing his own $4.3 million one day internet fundraising record set on November 5th. Having begun the day with fourth quarter total $11.5 million, the Ron Paul campaign now has $15.9 million.

NOTE: This post was cross-posted at The Moderate Voice.

But while much of the media and blogosphere’s attention has been spent on the messenger—his “quirkiness”, his naivety about believing he can win his party’s nomination, his avid internet supporters, his one-day fundraising totals, and his supposed “support” for the 9/11 Truth Movement—much less time has been spent focusing upon the message itself and what it means to the future of American politics. Ron Paul, himself has admitted, “I may not be the best messenger, but the message is powerful.”

And just what is that message?

Ron Paul says it’s a message of liberty. And indeed, in terms of elevating the freedom of the individual over the power of the government, Ron Paul is the most libertarian presidential candidate offered by one of the two major parties in many decades.

Yet, as many of his critics have pointed out, Ron Paul is not completely consistent in his libertarianism. His strong support for securing our nation’s borders and cracking down on illegal immigration is not consistent with the libertarian philosophy of allowing people and trade to travel freely across borders. His defense of his vote in favor of our military’s Don’t ask, don’t tell policy—while convincing in its rejection of groups rights—was a missed opportunity to criticize yet another government policy that the vast majority of libertarians believe is unjust and unnecessary. And at times, Mr. Paul’s devotion to federalism seems to overshadow his support for libertarian principles, as when he argues that certain issues (i.e. abortion, gay marriage) should be decided by state and local governments rather than by the federal government instead of raising the fundamental question of whether government at any level should be involved in these issues in the first place.

Still, Ron Paul’s notion of liberty and his willingness to speak out against policies that expand the power of the federal government and infringe upon our freedoms (both personal and economic) has set him apart from the current crop of presidential candidates (both Democrats and Republicans) and seems to be transforming American politics towards a new realignment—one that defies the traditional Democrat-versus-Republican, liberal-versus-conservative paradigm.

Libertarians Nick Gillespie (Editor-in-Chief of Reason Magazine) and Matt Welch (Assistant Editorial Page Editor of the Los Angeles Times) wrote a recent opinion piece in the Washington Times in which they attempt to explain the improbable rise of this maverick Republican Congressman from Lake Jackson, Texas:

That force is less about Paul than about the movement that has erupted around him — and the much larger subset of Americans who are increasingly disillusioned with the two major political parties’ soft consensus on making government ever more intrusive at all levels, whether it’s listening to phone calls without a warrant, imposing fines of half a million dollars for broadcast “obscenities” or jailing grandmothers for buying prescribed marijuana from legal dispensaries.

While some may question whether Ron Paul might be bad for libertarianism, his growing popularity and name recognition suggests that there is a growing movement in this country—made up of libertarians, Old Right conservatives, and anti-war liberals—who have grown tired of the politicians in control of this country as well as the Democratic and Republican parties.

Ron Paul remains a longshot to win the Republican nomination and an even longer shot of winning the presidential election. And his criticism is coming from a number of ideological fronts—both from neoconservatives who have never met an American War that they didn’t like as well as from dyed-in-the-wool progressives who have never met a domestic welfare program that they didn’t like.

Yet much of the criticism is also of a partisan nature—the type that comes from partisan Democrats and Republicans who realize that Ron Paul and libertarianism represent a direct challenge to the Democratic and Republican parties and the oversimplified liberal-versus-conservative spectrum that they reply upon to draw voters into their opposing camps. Like Ronald Reagan before him, Ron Paul seeks to define politics not by left-versus-right but by up-versus-down, where up represents libertarianism and down represents statism. Only, unlike Ronald Reagan (who went up to grow the size of government, balloon the national debt, and support anti-liberty government policies such as the War on Drugs), Ron Paul actually means what he says.

Ron Paul’s critics have argued that Ron Paul is dangerous. And they are right. Ron Paul is dangerous—though not in the ways that they believe he is. Ron Paul represents a third force in American politics that challenges our two-party system.

All too often, partisans have made crucial issues into a Democratic-versus-Republican or liberal-versus-conservative debate. People who speak out against the war are a bunch of “Bush-haters” and members of the “far left” while people who speak out against costly federal spending programs are “corporatists” and members of the “far right.” That there are pro-liberty/anti-authority voters out there that do not cleave to the traditional left-versus-right spectrum is an irritant to Democratic and Republican apologists who make their living by selling us the false lie that there are only two choices in American politics—us versus them.

UPDATE: Bill Westmiller of the Republican Liberty Caucus has informed me that Ron Paul did not vote for the military’s Don’t ask, don’t tell policy. Given that this law was passed in 1993, and Ron Paul wasn’t even in Congress in 1993, I would have to agree with Mr. Westmiller and concede that I was factually wrong in making this statement. I regret this mistake.

NOTE: This post was cross-posted at The Moderate Voice.

However, in recent years, a somewhat different tactic has emerged as a favorite among presidential candidates: the art of flip-flopping by presidential candidates who staked out positions that were popular when running for statewide office but became politically inconvenient when faced with appealing to the party base in the run up to presidential primaries.

This has certainly been the case with Mitt Romney, who repeated advocated his support for abortion rights when governor of Massachusetts (a state in which voters are overwhelming pro-choice) but conveniently converted to the pro-life a couple of years before the Republican presidential primaries (which are dominated by a party base which is overwhelmingly pro-life). It was also true—to a certain extent—with John Kerry and Hillary Clinton, both of whom supported the 2002 resolution granting the president the authority to invade Iraq and began to backtrack from their positions as the 2004 and 2008 Democratic Presidential primaries approached.

In yet another example of a politician advocating one position while running for state or local office and a completely different one upon running for president, Rudy Giuliani has decided that he now supports a very strict interpretation of the Second Amendment. While Giuliani's critics have been quick to point out Giuliani's sudden change of heart with regards to gun control, Giuliani's defenders have argued that Giuliani's positions are consistent with the principle of federalism—arguing that while he may have supported strict gun control laws for New York City, he believes that individual states have the right to reject such gun control laws.

Unfortunately for Giuliani and his supporters, Giuliani's current "federalist" interpretation of the Second Amendment directly contradicts his gun control record as mayor of New York, a period during which he championed federal gun control laws:

In 1993, Giuliani supported the 1993 Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act and, as mayor-elect of New York City, worked with President Clinton's justice department to implement further federal gun control measures.

In May of 1994, Mayor Giuliani spoke out in favor of the 1994 Federal Assault Weapons Ban, arguing that assault weapons "have no legitimate purpose."

In March of 1997, following an incident in which a Palestinian gunman opened fire within the Empire State Building, Mayor Giuliani issued a public address in which he argued:

We need a federal law that bans all assault weapons, and if in fact you do need a handgun you should be subjected to at least the same restrictions—and really stronger ones—that exist for driving an automobile. The United States Congress needs to pass uniform licensing for everyone carrying a gun.

Deliberately manufacturing many more firearms than can be bought for legitimate purposes such as hunting and law enforcement, and knowingly targeting these excess guns to criminals, youths and other persons unqualified to buy firearms Deliberately undermining New York City's gun control laws by flooding other markets which have less stringent gun laws with firearms that the manufacturers know are destined to be illegally resold in New York City. Ignoring the illegal practices of gun distributors, many of whom openly engage in the above practices. Refusing to manufacture safer guns, with features such as trigger locks and "personalization" measures that allow only authorized persons to fire the weapon.

The most stark example in which Giuliani was called out on his flip-flopping on the gun control, surprisingly enough, came during a Fox News Sunday interview with Chris Wallace on May 13, 2007:

WALLACE: One of the raps against you is that as mayor you did things that pleased your city but that weren't necessarily good for the nation. Case in point: Gun control. You now say that what works in New York doesn't necessarily work in Montana. But as mayor, you supported the nationwide Clinton weapons assault ban. You supported nationwide federal licensing. And you actually joined a lawsuit to make gun manufacturers liable if someone used their gun to shoot somebody.

GIULIANI: I did everything I could as mayor of New York City to reduce crime. And the strategy against guns, both civil and criminal, was very aggressive.

WALLACE: But that wasn't just tough in New York City, it was tough around the nation.

GIULIANI: But so was the strategy I utilized in New York City on everything. I was criticized for being too aggressive about the enforcement of the laws, including the gun laws. But the reality is I began with the city that was the crime capital of America. When I left, it was the safest large city in America. I reduced homicides by 67 percent. I reduced overall crime by 57 percent. And you don't do that by not aggressively enforcing the laws. The quote that I have from the time I was mayor is that the conditions in New York and the things you do in New York about guns may be different than Texas. And the reality is I've always looked at it that way.

WALLACE: No, no, no, but at the time you said, in fact, that weak laws, weak gun laws, around in other states might actually end up producing guns on the streets of New York, so you needed nationwide laws.

GIULIANI: What we were doing was using civil remedies to try to help New York, as well as using criminal remedies to help New York. The reality is as mayor of New York, I looked to do all the things that I could do to protect the people of my city. They were my responsibility. That's the way I looked at it on September 11. That's how I looked at it on the day that I became mayor of New York City. Now, here's how I look at...

WALLACE: And as president?

GIULIANI: As president, my interest is going to be how to protect the people of the United States of America. When I take that oath of office, it'll be real clear to me who the people I have to protect are. They're the people of the United States of America.

Now, the reality is — just as you asked me about line-item veto — I told you I'm a strict constructionist, or I try to be. The Second Amendment to the Constitution is about as clear as it can be.

It gives people the individual right to bear arms. I agree with that. I think that is a correct interpretation. That means that any restrictions have to be reasonable.

And those restrictions largely have to do with criminal background, background of mental illness, and they should basically be done on the state-by-state level. And that's the guidelines that I would use in dealing with it as president.

The issue here isn't that Giuliani changed his position on gun control. The issue is that he chose to do it just as he was preparing to run for president and that he offered little explanation for his change of heart other than the excuse that all too many Republicans fall back on when confronted by their flip-flops—9/11. In a speech before the National Rifle Association in September of 2007, Giuliani argued that the attacks on New York and the Pentagon put "a whole different emphasis on the things America needs to do to protect itself, and maybe even a renewed emphasis on the Second Amendment."

It's ironic that Giuliani would cite 9/11 as a reason for his renewed respect for the Second Amendment given that he's also used 9/11 as a reason for undermining other portions of the Bill of Rights—particularly with regards to the USA PATRIOT Act and the NSA's warrantless wireless surveillance program. His new-found commitment to the concept of federalism is equally laughable given his staunch support for allowing the federal government to conduct raids on medical marijuana users in states in which medical marijuana is legal.

NOTE: This post was cross-posted at The Moderate Voice.

Six months later, I wrote a follow-up post in which I lamented that anti-war Democrats who have relentlessly criticized Bush for invading Iraq would nonetheless rally around the candidacy of Hillary Clinton who voted in favor of the 2002 resolution that gave Bush the authority to invade Iraq:

And here's the sad part. All of the Democrats who have been denouncing the Iraq War for the last two and a half years will flock to Hillary Clinton and proclaim her the savior of the Democratic Party, seemingly oblivious to the fact that she, like Bush, was responsible for a war that sent a couple thousand American soldiers to their deaths and claimed the lives of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians. We can expect Clinton and the DLC to advertise the fact that the Bush administration STILL has not apprended Osama Bin Laden, and instead of arguing for a more humble and realistic foreign policy that rejects the naive notions of the current administration's War on Terrorism, Clinton and the DLC will argue that the War on Terrorism was not fought HARD ENOUGH and that it would had succeeded had Bush not bungled it all up.

Sure enough, Senator Clinton announced her candidacy in December 2006, and she's been leading in the polls ever since.

Senator Clinton's candidacy was initially met by fierce criticism from anti-war activists within the party--many of whom thought her sudden conversion from war-supporter to war-opponent less than 14 months before the 2008 primaries smacked of political opportunism and were further angered when she refused to apologize for voting for the 2002 resolution that sent our country on the path to war with Iraq.

Yet Senator Clinton was not about to be denied her party's nomination. Just as President Bush has employed revisionist history to explain why we went to war with Iraq, so to has Senator Clinton in order to justify her support for the 2002 resolution. Last February, I wrote a post at the Coming Realignment in which I argued that Senator Clinton was retroactively attempting to alter her justification for supported the war in the first place. Senator Clinton argued that she only supported the 2002 resolution in order to put pressure on Saddam Hussein to allow weapons inspections and that she did not support the invasion itself. However, as I pointed out then, a March 2003 video depicting a meeting between Hillary Clinton and members of Code Pink (a group of left-wing activists) shows that this was not the case at all. As the video clearly shows, Hillary Clinton supported the invasion of Iraq (with or without international support) less than two weeks before our government's "shock and awe" campaign in Baghdad commenced.

As Hillary Clinton's lead over her Democratic rivals increases, I continue to be astounded by how easily Democrats are willing to support a Senator who for four years, supported this misguided war in Iraq. This is the same Hillary Clinton who criticized Russ Feingold for daring to suggest that we withdraw from Iraq back in 2005.

A hawk...A panderer...A political opportunist...

But a neocon?

That's what libertarian Radley Balko argues in an article over at Reason. As he sees it, a Hillary Clinton presidency wouldn't be all that different from a George W. Bush presidency, and he provides an account of some of the political positions taken by Senator Clinton that suggests a strong neoconservative streak in her:

Then there is Hillary Clinton on the issues. Cato Institute President Ed Crane recently wrote a piece for the Financial Times pointing out that when you strip away the partisan coating, Mrs. Clinton's grandiose, big-government vision is really no different than that envisioned by the neoconservatives so loathed by the left. Clinton, remember, not only voted for the Iraq war, she still hasn't conceded she was wrong to do so, and has made no promise to end it any time soon.

In fact, the L.A. Times reported last week that Clinton has refused to commit even to pulling U.S. troops from Iraq by 2013, which, if elected, would be the end of her first term. TV journalist Ted Koppel recently told NPR that Clinton has admitted the U.S. would still have troops in Iraq at the end of her second term.

The 1990s, remember, weren't exactly a decade of peace. Bill Clinton ordered more U.S. military interventions than any other post-WWII administration, and there's no reason to think any of them were over Hillary's protestations. She supported the U.S. military campaigns in Haiti, Kosovo, and Bosnia. She once boasted that as the tension in Kosovo mounted, she called her husband from her trip to Africa and, "I urged him to bomb."

Hillary Clinton voted for both the Patriot Act and its reauthorization. She voted for building a wall on the U.S.-Mexican border. She voted to loosen restrictions limiting the federal government's ability to wiretap cell phones. In the past, she has supported a robust role for the federal government in enforcing "decency" standards in television and music. She teamed up with former Sen. Rick Santorum on a bill calling for the federal government to restrict the sale of violent video games.

Hillary Clinton may be loathed by leading neoconservatives and may loathe them in return. Yet they have more in common with each other than either of them would care to admit. As a U.S. Senator, Hillary Clinton has had seven years to lay out her political positions, and she hasn't shied away from making speeches or meeting with constituents. But in the end, a politician is judged by how he/she exercises that unique power that distinguishes him/her from the rest of us--the power to vote for or against legislation. And on many of the most controversial and far-reaching pieces of legislation that have been passed these last seven years, Senator Clinton has voted the de-facto neoconservative position.

After 7 years of Bush and Cheney controlling the Executive Branch, I can see why Democrats would want to see change come to the White House.

Unfortunately, Hillary Clinton isn't that change.

Note: This post was cross-posted at The Moderate Voice.

Introduced by Republican Senator Mitch McConnell and named the Protect America Act of 2007, the bill was passed by the U.S. Senate by a vote of 60 to 28, then passed by the U.S. House of Representatives by a vote of 227 to 183, and signed into law by President Bush on August 5, 2007. Republicans nearly unanimously supported the bill while Democrats largely opposed the bill (although the bill received considerable support from Blue Dog Democrats, without whose support, the bill likely would not have passed).

And where does the former Republican Congressman stand on this issue?

Here's a hint. The title of his op-ed is Congress Trashes Your Privacy.

Mr. Barr writes:

Spokesmen for the Bush administration, including the president himself, in the lead up to the recent precipitous congressional action amending and expanding the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, repeatedly claimed that its efforts were designed simply to "update" the 30-year-old law. As usual, however, the remedy went far beyond that which might have been reasonably necessary. The administration claimed also that the targets of the expanded power were only to be those persons who were themselves suspected terrorists or were communicating with known or suspected terrorists. This assertion was simply false.

There was a need to modernize certain of the technical provisions in FISA. For example, there was a recent interpretation by a court that calls sent by modern routing mechanisms through the U.S. even though both parties were located abroad required a court order, because the routing alone subjected them to the warrant provisions of the law. But such matters could easily have been handled without dramatically altering the scope of the law.

Instead of simply doing what it said publicly it needed to do —- that is, a technical fix to the law to bring its provisions in line with 21st-century communications technology —- the administration played on congressional fears and ignorance of the law to ram through an expansion of the law's reach that made virtually every international call or e-mail subject to monitoring. This essentially gutted any oversight by the courts.

During his time in Congress, Bob Barr was one of the most conservative politicians in office. A fierce critic of the Clinton administration, he led the impeachment effort against Clinton and even wrote a book in which he lambasted Clinton.

And even he can't support the policies of the Bush administration.

NOTE: This post was cross-posted at The Moderate Voice.

John Kerry's flip-flopping resulted in at least one casualty: his chance of becoming president.

How many casualties will ultimately result from Cheney's flip-flopping?