The point of this post wasn’t to suggest you’re playing favorites, but to show that the Constitution today is invoked only when it suits partisan posturing, particularly when it comes to bombing the piss out of foreign countries. Hypocrisy is all around.

But as long as I have your attention, I would like to get your opinion on a few issues. So what would Doug Thompson do if he were president?

What would you do to reduce spending? What would you do to reduce the deficit? What is your position on the Federal Reserve? Should the Congress reassert its constitutional authority over our currency? Should the Fed be audited? Abolished?

What would you do to bring back our industry? What would you do to bring back our jobs? Obama promised to revisit NAFTA and GATT. Instead he pursues more “free-trade” treaties. Would you have us get out of these treaties?

What would you do on foreign policy? What would you do about all these wars? Would you take us out of the UN?

You’re pretty clear on your anti-every one within a hundred miles of Washington position. But what are you for?

How can the federal government deny a marriage between two same sex Americans? How can the federal government issue a law against abortions? Who issued these authorities? I had to admit being shocked at the Supreme Court backing out of the Roe v Wade mess but felt that it was time the individuals involved needed to take the responsibility for or against abortions.

America has never needed laws to force citizens into anything. The laws are supposed to protect their decisions. If a family is basically Catholic then abortions are out of the question. Let the church take the action. If a child turns out to be gay then explain to the child that it is against religious rules and leave it there. We are at the point that these issues are now part of the campaigns This entire attitude is what caught my attention of Congressman Paul of Texas. He represented the limited government that appealed to me. I flew to Atlanta to meet and discuss these issues with him and a group of strong Republican politicians. I heard no strong appeal to keep the government out of our personal choices. It was as if these men were afraid to stand up for individual freedoms over the voice of an all mighty ghost who stood only behind Jesus Christ. I heard many excuses for this brand of freedom and I knew that there would never be a candidate who had enough respect for the American people to allow them to choose their own actions.

I ended up writing in P.J. O’Rourke’s name. Have we Americans given away our right to choose our mates? our unwanted pregnancies? our right to die without pain? Orwell warned us it would take some brains to stand up for ourselves. Why? Why? Why?

The frustration of being unable to debate these things without a laugh track….Too much Lucy in our childhood? Before I left California I sat through a slap stick version of Don Giovanni complete with a kazoo when someone slipped on the stage. Too much Lucy in that production which meant little classic background in grand opera.

I have mentioned racism on this site because I have had thousands of discussions with my Republican political playmates over the years and was stunned to realize they would not vote for a black candidate. Almost from day one, his name was used to prove he was a Muslim. Fox and Rush picked this up and tried like holy hell to see him pushed out of the race.

There can be no doubt that the GOP will never accept a black person in our White House and for that I have lost all respect for all levels of the GOP. I remember the racist crap from Haley Barbour when he was head of the RNC. The Senators who followed who all stood firmly on the Bible when it came to gays and women in trouble. Christians all and full of hatred for people of color and women and gays in general. This is not representative of American values!

Without every single Americans sharing equal rights, there is no America! That is step one! Once that is established then we can argue over mandated federal laws being forced on individual states. Maybe some southern states will need to guarantee equal academics in their schools before accepting welfare for their residents. We have portions of places in America where kids still cannot read or learn a trade to support themselves. Cut these areas off of handouts and hand the people back to the state for retraining.

I’m with Paul on many of these ideas but it cannot be done over night. Paul has not been at it long enough to come up with alternative plans for gradually bringing in all Americans into the system of equality. Paul has surrounded himself with religious idiots who have only one action to get what they want. Prayer is not the answer. The solving of our natural disasters is not praying for forgiveness for whatever we did to deserve the oil gulf mess or the earthquakes or the hurricanes. Science is the answer and teaching survival skills to the people. The GOP wants revival meetings to solve our problems even when it means standing on a woman’s head to shut her up at a demonstration. Put a laugh track behind that scene and you have Lucy acting like a silly fool. That is where America stand today.

When Obama picked Biden, I wrote:

So much for the dream, so much for the promises of change, so much for casting aside the old way of doing things. If you want to deliver on those promises, you don’t pick a two-time loser as a Presidential candidate, a long-winded speaker who puts people to sleep or a known plagiarist who also lied outright when he said he would never accept an offer of the vice presidency.

Obama might, possibly, have come up with a worse choice than Joe Biden but that would be a short list.

Bringing Biden into the fold is a sellout of the highest order, a capitulation to the old-style liberalism that has sunk the Democratic Party time and again.

Picking Biden suggests Obama is not an agent of change but simply a purveyor of false hopes and impossible dreams.

http://www.capitolhillblue.com/node/10784

Don’t lump me in with partisan web sites. I worked inside the political system long enough to distrust them all, including the Pauls, Kucinichs, et. al. Honesty and integrity is not an option in the American political system.

Nobody gets a break here. Never have, never will.

I’m just as harsh on Democrats as I am on Republicans. I don’t play favorites and I treat all elected officials with equal disdain and disrespect.

That’s my style and it won’t change.

In 2007, appearing on Hardball with tingly-legged Chris Matthews, Joe Biden said of George Bush…

“…the President has no constitutional authority, to take this nation to war against a country of 70 million people unless we’re attacked or there is proof that we are about to be attacked. And if he does, if he does, I would move to impeach him.

The House actually has to do that, but I would lead an effort to impeach him. The reason for my doing that, I don’t say it lightly, I don’t say it lightly, I say it because they should understand, that what they were threatening, what they were saying, what was adding up to be, what looked like to the rest of the world what we were about to do, would be the most disastrous thing that could be done at this moment in our history that I can think of.”

So I guess that only applies when we have a Republican President and we want to bomb a country with a population of 70 million.

Sorry Libya, you didn’t pass constitutional muster on this one.

The idea of nullification is to assert the right of states to govern themselves. In the 1800′s slavery was the issue. Today the issues are different.

Connecting racism to the idea of nullifying federal laws that have nothing at all to do with slavery or racial issues, and painting those that support nullification as a means to assert those rights as being racist is completely wrong. It does nothing to promote intelligent discussion on the actual issue of nullification.

So the question remains…How do we reign in an out of control federal government?

You say we need a strong candidate. Obama was a strong candidate. Look where it’s gotten us. And all that opposed him were considered racists. All that opposed Hillary Clinton were misogynists. No one wanted to talk policy.

We put too much emphasis on the presidency. The People speak through the Congress.

Paul’s run in 2008 in fact did inject serious policy issues into the national consciousness. So it wasn’t entirely a lost cause. Prior to 2008 no one paid much attention to the Federal Reserve. I’m not here to campaign for Paul. I’m here to talk policy.

People are rethinking our foreign policy. People are rethinking our monetary and economic policy. People are rethinking the role the federal government should play and the role of the individual states in determining what’s best for its citizens.

I can’t find any thing bad in rethinking policies that are destroying this country.

Freedom is not a lost cause.

It’s actually the same for folks who encounter each other in the flesh regularly, only not so unidimensionally.

I agreed with you and the other posters that the original column was a bit strong and I amended some of the language, added a historical reference to the use of nullification against slavery and added information from a Constitutional law professor. I searched the web at length and could not find someone who is a recognized and established expert on Constitutional law who agreed with Paul’s position on nullification

I have an opinion about his actions and intentions and you have yours. Is it an attack to state that opinion?

Is it an attack to say that I think he is a out-of-mainstream candidate who uses Presidential campaigns as a fund-raising gimmick?

Is it my opinion that following Paul and his beliefs is a waste of time and effort because he cannot win the Presidency and he cannot get his beliefs into the national debate. I feel the same way about Dennis Kucinich and said so in a column earlier this week. The Kucinich faithful were as upset with me as the Paul legions.

I don’t believe we can accomplish a thing by following or supporting lost causes. We have to find a way to get real change candidates who can win and make a difference.

Even after a decade of working inside the system I don’t know how to accomplish that. I wish I did.

If I characterized you unfairly, I apologize. The hit and run attacks of too many of the Paul faithful is another thing that hurts his credibility and contributes to my view — and the view of others in my profession — that the movement is full of crackpots.

Nullification is viewed as a far-right idea because of hit pieces like this one, that offered no historical reference and no truth. Does truth matter? Does intelligent discussion matter? Your piece was a provocation aimed at getting the very response that you wanted – and got.

I’m not a tea partier. I saw the Republicans co-opting and destroying that from the beginning. And they have.

I’ve been participating on this site for four years now I guess. I’m not here every day campaigning for Ron Paul. But I do support him and I won’t apologize for that. Not because of his personality or his personal beliefs, but for his policy positions.

I don’t agree with nor do I condone the tactics used by the others. In fact it infuriates me. But I can only concern myself with what I do. I don’t spam other sites. I don’t troll the web looking for people bashing Ron Paul so I can spout off. This is the only place I participate, aside from the very, very occasional comment on Daily Caller.

So I can’t speak for the other people. I don’t hide behind any thing. I’ve been Griff all my life. But if it makes you happy, I’ll start posting using my full name. And my e-mail address is and always has been valid.