Some people think Ron Paul is constitutionally pure. He is not. His wish to eliminate the Department of Education or the Income Tax is not grounded in the Constitution. Nowhere in that document are such things prohibited, abstractly or concretely. There is also the problem that a healthy chunk of Paul's base is white supremacists masquerading under the familiar banner of "stayyyyytes raaaaghhhhhts," but that's another story for another day.
There is however a very specific language regarding how the United States should go to war. Congress, not the President, declares war. That's Federal Law that Presidents keep breaking, and Congresses keep facilitating the breakage of that law out of sheer cowardice.
Ron Paul knows this and basically cleans all the GOP candidates' clocks on the issue, and on United States' imperialism more generally, in this recent videotaped debate. And this is a big part of why Paul, though obviously an Ideologue in the most accurate sense of the Word, is peeling off so much money from all over the political spectrum.
Harrogate is seriously, check out this video.
Especially check out Giuliani salivating at the opportunity to remind us, in case anyone anywhere forgot even for a nanosecond, that he was in New York on 9-11.
The FOX News framing makes it even more entertaining still.
Finally, click it over to You Tube and ye will see that someone entitled it, probably after some time on Pete's Couch, "Ron Paul Courageously Speaks the Truth."
:-0 and Hmmmmmmmm....
1 comment:
At least Ron Paul could participate in the last debate.
I am not sure about your method of Constitutional interpretation for the Department of Education. Where there is nothing that prohibits it, there is nothing that textually specifics that Congress has the power to create one. (At least there is an amendment for the income tax, though some argue that amendment is exceeds the necessary and proper clause.)
I rase this point because of the War Powers. If you read some portions of the Constitution as allowing s such as the Department of Education, then under what method of interpretation can you limit the power of the President to respond to crises?
A constitutionally irony: those that believe the Constitution protects a right to choose usually believe that the same Constitution does not allow the President expansive war powers; those that believe the president has expansive war powers, may not believe the Constitution protects the right to choose.
Is there a principled account to explain both?
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