Recently, Republican Rep. Ron Paul of Texas took to the floor of the House to talk about Wikileaks, transparency in government, and the case of Daniel Ellsberg, the 
Pentagon Papers, and the New York Times. He spoke about how the Iraq War was based on lies. He asked how the U. S. government should prosecute a citizen of Australia for publishing classified U. S. documents that he did not steal. Paul also said the following: “Revealing the real nature and goal of our presence in so many Muslim countries is a threat to our empire, and any revelation of this truth is highly resented by those in charge.”
Paul posed a number of questions at the end of his talk:
Number 1: Do the America People deserve know the truth regarding the ongoing wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen?
Number 2: Could a larger question be how can an army private access so much secret information?
Number 3: Why is the hostility mostly directed at Assange, the publisher, and not at our governments failure to protect classified information?
Number 4: Are we getting our moneys worth of the 80 Billion dollars per year spent on intelligence gathering?
Number 5: Which has resulted in the greatest number of deaths: lying us into war or Wikileaks revelations or the release of the Pentagon Papers?
Number 6: If Assange can be convicted of a crime for publishing information that he did not steal, what does this say about the future of the first amendment and the independence of the internet?
Number 7: Could it be that the real reason for the near universal attacks on Wikileaks is more about secretly maintaining a seriously flawed foreign policy of empire than it is about national security?
Number 8: Is there not a huge difference between releasing secret information to help the enemy in a time of declared war, which is treason, and the releasing of information to expose our government lies that promote secret wars, death and corruption?
Number 9: Was it not once considered patriotic to stand up to our government when it is wrong?
Thomas Jefferson had it right when he advised ‘Let the eyes of vigilance never be closed.’ I yield back the balance of my time.
Source: Huffington Post
– Elaine Magliaro
Tony C:
“the Interstate Highway system may be the best investment this country has ever made,”
Ike used national defense to build those roads, he at least payed some respect to the constitution.
Yep and social security was supposed to be a good idea to, but medicare, SS, medicaid all financially unsustainable. When people start paying 80% of their income to pay for other people to live, we are going to have a revolt. We are seeing the revolt against spending now.
Please let me know what government can provide at cost? I don’t know of one thing.
But keep on dreaming.
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/12/13/headlines#1
Attorney: U.S. Grand Jury Meeting in Virginia to Indict Julian Assange
“An attorney for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange says he has heard that U.S. authorities have secretly empaneled a grand jury in Virginia in an attempt to indict Assange. Attorney Mark Stephens made the claim in an interview with Al Jazeera. Assange has been held in a London jail since last Tuesday on an international warrant to face sexual crime allegations in Sweden. While international protests in support of Assange continue around the world, calls are increasing for Julian Assange to be charged in the United States. Over the weekend, President Bush’s former Attorney General Michael Mukasey said he hopes to see Assange prosecuted under the Espionage Act of 1917.”
rafflaw wrote (to Buddha):
“You are right about the DOJ. If the DOJ was like this in Nixon’s days we would have never learned about the illegal acts committed in the Watergate scandal!!”
===============
Someone needs to expose what’s going on domestically and it apparently isn’t going to be the DOJ.
Openleaks is apparently launching today and, hopefully, there will be other viable avenues available to whistleblowers in the future.
Big Brother is doing a lot more than watching… Who will take the bull(y) by the horns, if not our Department of “Justice”…?
There isn’t much I agree with Paul about. But you can put a check mark by all of these points.
When the Hope and Change Administration releases the same whines about the horrors of truth telling as any previous Adm every has, we know that the WH is just like all the others.
No Hope and nothing’s Changed.
@Cato: Funny how people hate free markets, too. The reason dictators pick up on socialist ideas is that people LOVE socialist ideas, when properly put.
Medicare is a socialist idea in medical insurance. Virtually everybody on it thinks it is great! Roads are a socialist idea in transportation; the Interstate Highway system may be the best investment this country has ever made, in terms of cost-savings and returns to citizens and businesses. It is a perfect example of the government doing something at break-even costs that benefits everybody. There were decades of opportunity for the free market to build toll roads and they never did.
There is a whole host of services that virtually everybody needs, which the government can provide at cost; which would leave people with the maximum amount of capital to invest in more niche concerns. Even completely uneducated primitives can see this; humans have had large “socialist” village ovens for bread-baking for at least 3000 years, and have even had “taxes” before there was *income* by requiring families send someone to take their turn in tending the fire of that big bad socialist oven.
Socialism (not communism) is the default state of how humans organize their affairs in the typical native group of less than 200 persons. Socialism simply embraces the obvious truth that people can cooperate and reduce their costs, whether in terms of money or effort or time. Thirty families can EACH build an oven and a fire and all tend their baking bread separately, or with a tenth of the effort build a large community oven and all bake their bread together, with less firewood and less effort because one baker can tend 30 loaves about as easily as one loaf.
The Romans built the aquaducts because everybody needs water, and they gave it away for free in public fountains and baths open to everybody.
Socialism is the default state of humanity and has existed for as long as we have been modern humans. Probably since before that; there is strong evidence Neanderthalis practiced socialism.
“All sharing of ideas is a contest. Not all ideas are created equal and the bad ideas either fall or are picked up by bad actors for their own benefit and/or the ignorant out of ignorance.”
You have that right, socialist ideas are always picked up by bad actors, Lenin, Marx, Mao, Hitler, Mussolinni and others. Funny how dictators dont like free markets isnt it.
The PIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain) are in deep financial trouble, America is almost bankrupt and you are telling me that I havent won? Only if the jury is blind, deaf and intellectually deficient. Oh I forgot we are on a left wing blog, my mistake.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/judicial/2010-12-08-prosecutor_N.htm
“OPR is a black hole. Stuff goes in, nothing comes out,” said Jim Lavine, the president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. “The public, the defense attorneys and the judiciary have lost respect for the government’s ability to police themselves.”
hahahahaha sleep tight with the DOJ watching over everyone
Buddha,
If the Teapublicans can nullify the laws that they don’t like, maybe we can nullify the Judiciary Act of 1789! You are right about the DOJ. If the DOJ was like this in Nixon’s days we would have never learned about the illegal acts committed in the Watergate scandal!!
raff,
Upon further reflection, statutory modification of the Judiciary Act of 1789 might be required as well.
It seems a shame the DOJ is so politicized. It really does have all the tools to do the job. Just not the spine or the will.
Tony,
You said, “That is my biggest complaint about the health care deal without a public option.”
It boggles the mind that the fundamental underpinning of insurance – distribution of risk across a pool – was totally ignored by Congress when they failed to realize that the largest possible risk pool is everyone.
But then they couldn’t have propped up their buddies from the insurance industry and lobby, but hey, what’s a few hundred thousand people’s lives when there’s money to be made!
Wikileaks has recently posted posted Ron Paul’s comments on their Facebook page.
-Ron Paul
Elaine and Tony C.,
Well said!
@ekeyrya: Of COURSE it makes a difference; if you think it doesn’t make a difference no wonder you believe the bullshit you do.
If you are buying a car and the salesman tells you, “This is really, really a great deal, it’s an awesome price,” do you just BELIEVE him?
The “Council for American Private Education” is obviously interested in providing a competitive price for Private Education, they are an advocacy group. They could easily fudge their numbers by including, say, home schooling costs, or church schooling costs, or any number of other things. They could be inflating the costs of public education by including costs there they quietly leave out of private education, because they only count “tuition.” Not gifts, or grants, or the value of volunteer work, or the cost of books and uniforms and transportation included in the cost of public education. “Tuition” at the college I work at is not 100% of the costs to students; they also have dorm costs, book costs, sometimes lab costs and materials costs.
Why in the world would I trust any advocacy group on anything to report numbers on the thing they advocate for accurately? They can be biased without even knowing it; their own core assumptions about how things work may sabotage their accuracy.
There is no rational reason to believe this advocacy group reports accurate numbers. You are listening to the people that tell you what you want to hear, so you keep clinging to your fantasy, dummy.
It doesn’t make a difference. it is logically and mathematically impossible for any for-profit group to provide a service for less than the government can provide it. The people that work for the for-profit group will work for the same price for the government; in fact the government can guarantee security they cannot get from the private group. Whatever the profit margin might be for the service, the government can reduce the price by that percentage and sell it cheaper. Unlike the private enterprise, the government requires no cash reserves for emergencies or contingencies and the government can self-insure against liability, further reducing its costs.
If private school is truly lower cost than the cost of public schooling (I doubt it, but hypothetically) it would probably be because from the point of view of parents the private schools are competing with the option of FREE public schooling; if FREE public schooling did not exist AND school was still MANDATORY, the prices would skyrocket, because the government would be forcing people to buy their product. (That is my biggest complaint about the health care deal without a public option.)
rafflaw,
The private school tuition figure is not true in the area where I live either. Private and parochial schools don’t have to provide the kinds of special needs services that public schools are required to provide for children who have learning difficulties and/or physical handicaps. Private and parochial schools aren’t required to accept all children who apply. Public schools must accept all children who live in their districts–whether they have special needs or not. Public schools in my area also provide transportation for students who live a certain distance from the schools they attend. That amount is included in the per pupil cost.
Elaine,
I forget to mention that many of the Catholic schools require minimum donations to the church so those payments should be added to the “real” tuition costs. The Archdiocese of Chicago, like most churches, subsidizes much of the real cost.
Elaine,
That private tuition figure is not true in the Chicago area. Just google Loyola Academy, St. Ignatius, and any of the Chicago Catholic schools. Then check out the private charter schools and there are Kindergarten tuitions that are more expensive than the figure our friend has provided. I am sure that the costs are not as expensive as some areas so it your questioning of those figures is appropriate. Without some organization or church or temple subsidizing those tuition costs, that figure seems very low. Are private colleges included in that average?
Ooo. “the stench of millions of dead bodies wafting downwind” – Another Nazi comparison from the fascist home schooled! Help me, Karl Rove! Whatever will I do!
Other than laugh at you pinned to the floor by the fundamentally untenable position that greed is good for anyone other than the greedy.
Yeah, looking to build social systems that protect all of society and not just the rich is certainly the way to kill millions.
Unlike “protect profits at all costs”, which will lead us to utopia.
Let me help you, McHomeSchooled – that was sarcasm. Except for the laughing at your ridiculous foundation.
You know, the French aristocracy was also too stupid and vain to realize that the people warning them about how out of control poverty was going to cause trouble were also trying to protect them from themselves. Greed, ignorance and delusion about human nature is its own reward. Keep poking the poor bear. I’m going to laugh when it starts biting you too.
ekeyra,
“Elaine, does interest or disinterest somehow change the facts?”
You say that the average amount for a private school tuition as provided by the Council for American Private Education is a fact. I’d like to know how the organization arrived at that $8,549 amount. How do I know that number is a fact–because you say it is?
raff,
I’m still thinking about your idea.
I think I see another way other than a new office, but it would not require amendment. Just difficult to pass legislation.
Make the DOJ independent from the CoC of the Executive. All it would take is a modification of 28 U.S.C. § 503 et seq. to remove the language about he or she serves at the pleasure of the President and can be removed by the President at any time to read that an USAG can only be removed by impeachment or replaced by a new President and grant power to appoint subordinates to the sitting AG instead of vesting with the President. That would free the hands of the AG from any political influence and allow that office to pursue crime where the evidence leads, not where the President tells them it leads if they want to keep their job. There is also precedent of making a staff position independent – the Postmaster General.
ekeyra,
That cost comparison is powerful, especially considering the results achieved in the private sector.
Question: Does the public school calculation include underfunded / underperforming pension funds for teachers? According to a 2010 study by the Manhattan Institute, teacher pensions are underfunded by almost $1 trillion nationally. That needs to go in the numerator over the coming decade. Plus interest when we borrow it, of course.