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Rand Paul Promotes Bill To ‘End Abortion On Demand Once And For All’

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Republican Senator Rand Paul says he wants to pass a Life at Conception Act to “end abortion on demand once and for all.”

Senator Paul, R-KY, recently recorded a message for the National Pro-Life Alliance (NPLA), talking about the legislation, which would declare unborn babies legal persons from the moment of conception and give them Constitutional protections.

The senator says Congress can legislatively overturn the Supreme Court‘s Roe v. Wade decision by passing a “personhood” law called the Life at Conception Act.

The law would establish that human life begins at conception, and extend 14th Amendment protection to babies in the womb.

Justice Harry Blackmun wrote in the 1973 ruling that if a fetus can be defined as a person, the “right” to abortion “collapses, for the fetus’s right to life is then guaranteed specifically by the [14th] Amendment.”

Read more from this story HERE.

The Kennedy Center Awards and the Crisis of the Times

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The Obamas’ theatrical giving of the Leftover-from-the-Sixties awards at the Kennedy Center – Led Zeppelin, which today provides the nerve-wracking background noise in grocery stores and Dustin Hoffman who hasn’t had a real job since 1967 – fully manifests the crisis in Washington, D.C. South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint asked recently about something else with some honest frustration, “We need new people.” You’d think President Obama would do better as he is second generation himself and doesn’t belong to this crowd and in his campaign autobiography clearly crowned the Leftover-from-the-Sixties Democrats as his target to displace so as to awaken again a new and vital liberalism. So how’s that working out?

Markos Moulitas, with hopes of ushering in a generation of Iraq war veterans into the political process, well represented new and better thinking and suggested Virginia’s then governor Mark Warner, Virginia Senator Jim Webb, General Wesley Clark and Vermont Governor Howard Dean at a time when Obama began to rise and Hillary hovered around zero percent at Daily Kos (really).

“Will these Clinton-era Democrats ever go away?” asked Kos in a Washington Post essay in the day. The answer is not so easily will they go into the good night, and herewith lays the crisis. Young conservatives should ask today as well as once – oh, so long ago – governor of Florida Jeb Bush, who landed his helicopter near the White House last week in symbolism more course and conspicuous than any we have seen the likes of since the Soviets claimed to have invented corn flakes, “Will these Bush era Republicans ever go away?”

The answer to both questions is YES but DeMint is right to ask. Conservatives are better off with a presence and suggestion of new people: Senator Rand Paul of Tennessee, Senator Mike Lee of Utah, Joe Miller sure to rise in Alaska and the most talented and energetic Ted Cruz, the new senator from Texas, and possibly the one to establish the new paradigm in conservatism. Because today’s Republicans are not conservative: They are anti-liberal. And today’s Democrats are not liberal, they are anti-conservative. Like Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarty they go over the waterfall together.

There is no conservative party in America today but Ron Paul is Gray Champion to the new thinking which arose in the Tea Party and will awaken in what Grover Norquist calls Tea Party II: In six words, states’ rights, sound money, constitutional government. It forms a new matrix for new people and a new generation.

We enter this month an end game as per the Mayan Prophecy. The fall is at hand, but things don’t break because storms challenge New York or comets obliterate the earth. They break because cultures, liberal or conservative, refuse to let go. They cannot adapt to new thinking and cling instead to the old, the worn through, the irrelevant. And this year they marched David Letterman into the Kennedy Center. David Letterman? Previous awards have gone to Leontyne Price, Fred Astaire, George Balanchine, Ella Fitzgerald, Henry Fonda, Martha Graham, Tennessee Williams, Count Basie, Alvin Ailey, George Burns, Merce Cunningham, Isaac Stern, Cary Grant and Jimmy Cagney. These celestials today welcome Letterman into their sanga. Can there be any greater harbinger of the end times?

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Bernie Quigley is a prize-winning magazine writer and has worked more than 30 years as a book and magazine editor, political commentator and book, movie, music and art reviewer. His essays on politics and world affairs have appeared in The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Philadelphia Daily News and other newspapers and magazines. He has published poetry in Painted Bride Quarterly and has written dozens of magazine articles. For 20 years he has been an amateur farmer, raising Tunis sheep and organic vegetables. He has written hundreds of columns for “Pundits Blog” in “The Hill” a political journal in Washington, D.C. He lives in the White Mountains with his wife and four children.

Rand Paul Mulling 2016 Run?

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photo credit: gage skidmoreKentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul is hinting that he may run for president in 2016.

“Am I interested in thinking about that? Yes,” Paul, the son of retiring Texas congressman and three-time presidential candidate Ron Paul, said when asked by ABC’s Jonathan Karl if he might explore his own presidential bid in four years.

Paul added that he wants “to be part of the national debate,” but said he is not ready to make the final decision to run.

“I am different than some in that I am not going to deny that I am interested,” Paul said. “I’m not going to deny that I think we have to go a different direction because we’re just not winning.”

Read more from this story HERE.

US Senate Votes 81 to 10 to Reject Limits on Aid to Pakistan, Libya, and Egypt (+video)

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This past weekend, the United States Senate voted 81 to 10 to reject Senator Rand Paul’s effort to limit financial aid to Pakistan, Libya, and Egypt until the countries surrender the individuals responsible for the recent attacks against US interests within their borders.

In urging passage of this foreign aid limitation, Senator Paul criticized Hillary Clinton’s efforts to award more aid to Egypt despite the nation’s vehemently anti-American actions over the last several months. He also slammed other anti-US actions taken by these supposed allies.

The following is a video of Senator Paul’s speech on the Senate floor. I recommend you skip the first 3:45 of the video:

And, in case you were wondering, Alaska’s Senators Murkowski and Begich voted against any limits on Pakistan’s, Libya’s, and Egypt’s foreign aid. All other Senators’ voting records appear HERE, too.

Where do Ron and Rand Paul fit in at the GOP convention?

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Photo credit: Gage Skidmore

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus has announced an initial list of seven prominent Republicans who will speak at the party’s national convention in Tampa later this month.

But the list, which includes five current and former governors, a U.S. senator, and a former secretary of state does not include either Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) or his son, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.). The list will be built out in the coming weeks, but it’s still worth exploring where the Pauls – two figures with intense national followings – fit in at Mitt Romney’s nominating convention. They can’t be ignored entirely, but featuring them too prominently is also a risky proposition for the GOP.

For Republicans, there are both benefits and drawbacks to including either of the Pauls on the list of convention speakers. Generating enthusiasm among a vocal base of activists is an argument in favor of promoting them. Ron Paul attracted strong support at numerous GOP presidential straw polls in 2011 and his loyal legion of fans often travel across the country to back him. Before Romney won the straw poll at this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, Paul was the victor there two years in a row.

One could also make a compelling argument to include the younger Paul as a speaker. Rand Paul’s unlikely 2010 Senate campaign victory, which the opthamologist won in the face of establishment opposition, has made him a popular figure in the tea party — and one who is well-positioned to inherit the mantle of his father, who is retiring at the end of the current Congress.

Ron Paul’s supporters, meanwhile, are eager for him to have a visible presence at the convention. Throughout the 2012 primary campaign, the former presidential candidate continued push for delegate support in individual states brought the Texas congressman within range of securing a speaking slot at the convention on his own. He ultimately fell short in Nebraska, where he failed to get the number delegates he needed to guarantee a spot.

Read more from this story HERE.

Tea Party Republicans sketch out Internet policy

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Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), the son of libertarian Congressman and presidential candidate Ron Paul, visited the conservative Heritage Foundation on Thursday to sketch out his agenda for preserving Internet freedom. In Paul’s view, this means opposing warrantless government snooping of private networks—and also opposing regulations intended to protect privacy and network neutrality.

The event follows last month’s announcement of a new “Internet freedom” initiative by the Campaign for Liberty, an activist group founded by the elder Paul. It appears that father and son see eye to eye on Internet issues, and the younger Paul used the Heritage event as an opportunity to explain his views.

Sen. Paul began by referencing Gordon Crovitz’s recent column in the Wall Street Journal, questioning whether the government launched the Internet. We’ve pointed out that Crovitz’s column was factually challenged; Paul offered a more nuanced version of the argument.

“It may not be completely simple but it’s definitely not as simple as that the government invented it,” he said. “When you say stuff like, ‘Oh, the government invented the Internet,’ it sort of demeans the process of the individuals who were involved.”

For example, “There was Vinton Cerf. There was Tim Berners-Lee. There were individuals. But it wasn’t the faceless government that invented the Internet. It was individuals. Even if some of them did work for government, the mind of the individual is what should be extolled, not some faceless bureaucracy.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Ted Cruz’s Victory Foretells Conservative Takeover of GOP

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Photo credit: Gage Skidmore

Richard A. Viguerie, Chairman of ConservativeHQ.com, made the following comments yesterday about Ted Cruz’s incredible victory in Texas:

“The victory of Ted Cruz in the Texas Republican Senate runoff primary means that the torch is being passed to a new generation of principled small government constitutional conservatives and that the ‘let’s make a deal’ Republican Party of old will soon go the way of the Dodo bird.

“Ted’s nomination sent a strong signal that a new conservative Republican Party is being born and, by 2016, principled conservatives will replace most leaders in Congress and the Party at the national, state, and local levels. GOP leaders should ‘ask not for whom the bell tolls — it tolls for thee.’

“The Cruz campaign was a contest in which the people–grassroots conservatives and Tea Partiers — routed the establishment and the special interests.

“Inspired by such national conservative leaders as Sarah Palin, Phyllis Schlafly, Ed Meese, James Dobson, by Senators Jim DeMint, Rand Paul, Mike Lee, and Tom Coburn, and by organizations such as The Club for Growth and FreedomWorks, the grassroots conservative and Tea Party voters of Texas took on the combined power of Governor Rick Perry, every Texas GOP state senator save one, and the good old boy network of Austin and DC lobbyists–and they won.

“By nominating Ted Cruz, the Republican voters of Texas today sent a strong message that what they want is an end to the crony capitalism, business-as-usual spending, and disregard for the Constitution that have dominated Washington no matter which party was in power.” Read more from this story HERE.

Another view:  Tea Party’s influence could reshape Senate Republicans

By Jennifer Steinhauer.  The tea party is very much alive in the drive for Republican control of the Senate, portending a potential shake-up in the mindset of the chamber.

The easy Republican primary victory in Texas on Tuesday of Ted Cruz, the 41-year-old Sarah Palin-blessed upstart, virtually assured the latest tea party candidate a seat in the chamber next year. And he will not be alone when it comes to those backed by the movement that propelled Republicans to control of the House in 2010.

Among 17 contested Senate races and in Texas, more than half a dozen of the Republican candidates — or those currently running ahead in their primaries — are tea party-embraced. The infusion of new conservative blood could alter the complexion of the Senate, increasing the sorts of conflicts between moderates and far-right Republicans disinclined toward compromise that have characterized the House for two years.

From Indiana — where Richard Mourdock recently toppled the veteran Republican Sen. Richard Lugar — to Wisconsin — where two tea party candidates are slowly unmooring the Republican front-runner, former Gov. Tommy Thompson — to Nebraska — where Deb Fischer surprisingly beat out a more established Republican candidate — tea party-backed contenders are surging. In Missouri, three Republicans are fighting to portray themselves as the candidate most strongly aligned with tea party values.

Even if Democrats maintain control, newcomers like Cruz are likely to quickly coalesce with veteran conservatives like Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina and freshmen like Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, enlarging the ranks of members who stand well to the right of their party’s central platform. Read more from this story HERE.