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Today the Liberty Report is back with another of its popular "Ask Ron Paul" episodes. Watch Dr. Paul handle four viewer questions in-depth and on-the-spot!
By Chris Rossini
President Trump may have very little to show for the first 6 months of his administration, but unfortunately the same can't be said for his Attorney General Jeff Sessions. In such a short period of time, Sessions has really beat-up on American liberty. So much so, that even statist publications like Vox call him "the most effective member of the administration by far."
Vox sums it up:
On criminal justice, Sessions has instructed US attorneys to take a much more aggressive line in charging drug, gun, and immigration offenses than they previously had — including undoing an Obama-era policy that allowed attorneys to avoid charging drug offenders with the harshest possible sentence...He’s expanded police powers to seize property from people who haven’t yet been convicted of a crime — including in states whose governments have banned the practice. He’s frozen Department of Justice efforts to oversee police departments accused of overly aggressive or discriminatory practices.
President Trump may have his problems with Jeff Sessions.
American liberty has some big problems as well.
House Members and Senators have rushed to co-sponsor a bill that would make boycotting Israel a felony, punishable by up to a million dollar fine and 20 years in prison. Faced with the fact that such a bill is clearly an attack on the First Amendment, some are now claiming that they didn't know what the bill was about when they sponsored it. What's going on here?
By Liberty Report Staff
So-called "school choice" is just another big government welfare program that puts private schools under federal control. It's surely not the solution to the problem of the federal government being (unconstitutionally) involved in education in the first place. American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten takes an unusual angle against "school choice" by comparing it to segregation. Ron Paul gets to the root of educational misery in America below:
President Trump has suggested he will sign the new Russia, North Korea, Iran sanctions bill that the House will vote on tomorrow. Accepting the bill will be a huge surrender for a president elected to improve relations with Russia. Can he ever recover?
Press Play to hear Ron Paul deliver his weekly update:
By Ron Paul
This week’s expected House vote to add more sanctions on Russia, Iran, and North Korea is a prime example of how little thought goes into US foreign policy. Sanctions have become kind of an automatic action the US government takes when it simply doesn’t know what else to do. No matter what the problem, no matter where on earth it occurs, the answer from Washington is always sanctions. Sanctions are supposed to force governments to change policies and do what Washington tells them or face the wrath of their people. So the goal of sanctions is to make life as miserable as possible for civilians so they will try to overthrow their governments. Foreign leaders and the elites do not suffer under sanctions. This policy would be immoral even if it did work, but it does not.
Why is Congress so eager for more sanctions on Russia? The neocons and the media have designated Russia as the official enemy and the military industrial complex and other special interests want to continue getting rich terrifying Americans into believing the propaganda.
Why, just weeks after the White House affirmed that Iran is abiding by its obligations under the nuclear treaty, does Congress pass additional sanctions anyway? Washington blames Iran for “destabilizing” Syria and Iraq by helping them fight ISIS and al-Qaeda. Does this make any sense at all? When is the last time Iran committed a terrorist act on our soil? It hasn’t. Yet we learned from the declassified 28 pages of the Congressional 9/11 report that Saudi Arabia was deeply involved in the 2001 attacks against Washington and New York. Who has funded al-Qaeda and ISIS in Syria for years? Saudi Arabia. Yet no one is talking about sanctions against that country. This is because sanctions are not about our security. They are about politics and special interests. Why is Congress poised to add yet more sanctions on North Korea? Do they want the North Korean people to suffer more than they are already suffering? North Korea’s GDP is half that of Vermont – the US state with the lowest GDP! Does anyone believe they are about to invade us? There is much talk about North Korea’s ballistic missile program, but little talk about 30,000 US troops and weapons on North Korea’s border. For Washington, it’s never a threat if we do it to the other guy. Here’s an alternative to doing the same thing over and over: Let’s take US troops out of North Korea after 70 years. The new South Korean president has proposed military talks with North Korea to try and reduce tensions. We should get out of the way and let them solve their own problems. If Iran and Russia want to fight ISIS and al-Qaeda at the invitation of their ally, Syria, why stand in the way? We can’t run the world. We are out of money. President Trump was elected to pursue a new kind of foreign policy. If he means what he said on the campaign trail, he will veto this foolish sanctions bill and begin dismantling neocon control of his Administration. 
By Liberty Report Staff
For eight years, we had to hear how Republicans were 'obstructing' President Obama's blueprint for turning America into the Garden of Eden. If only those heartless Republicans would stop standing in the way, President Obama would have been able to shower his voters with a deluge of other people's money. Needless to say, President Obama did plenty of damage despite the supposed 'obstruction' from the Republicans. Both the welfare state and warfare state kept their tradition of expansion, gobbling up the few liberties that remain in America along the way. Now President Trump has his error-filled blueprint to "Make America Great Again," but the Democrats have become the 'obstructionists'. The president has said so himself: "...the Democrats are obstructionists, no ideas or votes, only obstruction.”
And so we have come full circle.
Isn't democracy great? Two violent gangs who fight over how to divvy up our stolen loot. Naturally, both gangs want the loot at the same time, so they bicker and fight over it. If the Blue gang doesn't get the stolen loot, then the Earth will turn into a ball of fire (or block of ice, depending on the day) and people will start dying in streets. If the Red gang doesn't get the loot, then foreign barbarians will storm the gates and take over America. Of course, the Red and Blue arguments are interchangeable. Today, the Red gang refuses to get rid of Obamacare, and the Blue gang is foaming at the mouth for more foreign wars. There are no principles on either side. Whichever way the wind blows... The two gangs do agree on one thing though. The looting must continue, and continue to grow forever and ever. The one idea that never (ever) gets even the slightest mention is that maybe the two gangs should both take a hike. Maybe we don't need them and would be better off without them... Maybe there should be no stolen loot for them to fight over... No stealing...what a novel idea. Maybe our lives, liberties and property should be secure and not up for grabs. Democracy is not Freedom. Only Freedom is Freedom. As long as these two gangs exist and continue to have believers, we ain't got no freedom.
Former Marine Intelligence Officer and former UN Chief Weapons Inspector for Iraq, Scott Ritter, joins the Liberty Report today to explain why in his vast intelligence and WMD experience he believes the "Russia hacking" US Intel Report is bogus and why the "Assad used gas" conventional wisdom is just more fake news. Ritter's expertise sheds much-welcome actual light onto these two vexing issues, where so much empty speculation seems to drive the thinking.
By Liberty Report Staff
Repressive governments treat citizens as if they are the property of the government. The most important place to start is with the minds of the citizens. Compulsory government schooling takes care of that. Once the all-important minds of the citizens are conquered, government moves to the body. Governments dictate what their citizens may (or may not) put into their bodies, and they even force certain pharmaceuticals into those bodies. Since bodies produce wealth via labor, the next stop is for governments to assume that a citizen's earnings belong to the government first, and the government gets to decide how much the citizen is allowed to keep. When mind, body, and earnings are taken care of, it's time to make sure that the citizens can't leave. Countless examples have existed throughout history. The Berlin Wall was one of the most well known. Communist states like Cuba and North Korea view their citizens as property that must be kept within state lines in giant open-air prisons.
Americans like to sing jingles about how "free" they are, but there's no doubt that the modern American government views its citizens as their property.
Compulsory government schools? ... Check. That's the crown jewel that makes the rest of this work. What goes into American bodies is tightly controlled. The FDA, USDA, and other alphabet departments take care of the leg work. The War on Drugs and mandatory vaccinations also show everyone who the real boss is. In America, your earnings belong to the government first (via the income tax). You keep what government allows you to keep. What about travel? Do residents in "the land of the free" need permission to move their bodies from one place to another? For the most part, Americans can still travel to most places. But the U.S. is one of the few nations that will financially shake you down if you find greener pastures somewhere else and make your vacation permanent. Surely if you were free, you wouldn't need permission to travel anywhere. The only permission that you would need is from the property owner to whom you are traveling to. As long as you're not a trespasser, you should be free to go wherever you please on this earth. It doesn't matter if the place you are traveling to is populated by people who believe in sun gods, or socialism. What if you happen to believe in sun gods and socialism? Shouldn't you be free to go where others share your interests? It may be wise, or unwise to travel to these places, but that decision should be yours alone. Should you fall into trouble, you assume the risk. That's what it means to be free. You're free to take your own risks. Freedom is man's natural state. No one comes into the world with a king's crown on his head and no one leaves with one either. We also don't pass through "Customs" on our round trip in and out of this world. When we're sloppy, there's an endless supply of authoritarians who will gladly take away every last ounce of our naturally-granted freedom. Americans have been sloppy for a LONG time now...
According to a report cited by veteran journalist Patrick Cockburn, the nine month siege of Mosul may have cost as many as 40,000 civilian lives. Many thousands were killed when bombs buried them in rubble. Is this a victory?
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