Republican Liberty Caucus

On December 1, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to review a landmark decision today in which California state courts found that its medical marijuana law was not preempted by federal law.

According to The Las Angeles Times, Garden Grove, California police pulled over Felix Kha in June 2005 for a traffic violation and found him in possession of one-third of an ounce of marijuana.

Lawyers for Garden Grove argued that California law didn’t contain a specific provision for the return of medical marijuana, and contended that to return the drugs would violated federal law.

However, the Supreme Court put Garden Grove’s case to rest by not hearing the case.

According to an attorney for Americans for Safe Access, “There will be hundreds, if not thousands of patients who will no longer be subject to the confiscation of their medicine.” The attorney said that California, one of 13 states that had declared medical marijuana to be legal, has as many as 300,000 valid medical marijuana patients.

“This should send a message to the federal government that it’s time to establish a compassionate policy more consistent with the 13 states that have adopted medical marijuana laws,” another advocate said.

California’s Sonoma County Republican Party, led by RLC activists Michael Erickson and Matthew Heath, voted to censure Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in response to his decision to terminate his own ‘No New Taxes’ Pledge. In 2003, Schwarzenegger ran on a platform of cutting taxes. Among his reversed positions:

• Schwarzenegger issued a statement on November 6 that he intended to increase the state sales tax by 1.5 percent — a whopping 20 percent increase in the state-mandated portion of the tax — and expand its applicability to previously immune transactions (ranging from automobile and appliance repairs to veterinarian services); and

• Of particular note for those living in California’s wine country, Schwarzenegger proposed an extravagant new excise tax on beer, wine, and spirits, adding an additional 25 cents a bottle to the existing 20 cents a gallon excise for wine.

In response, the Sonoma County GOP issued a press release expressing the members’ wishes for a censure of Governor Schwarzenegger. On the cutting edge of politics in California, the Sonoma County GOP inspired their allies in the Placer County GOP to follow suit with both a resolution and press release in opposition to the any sales tax increase.

In these releases, the county Republican Parties called attention to the fact that the California Republican Party had remained sadly and impotently silent.  As a result of the actions by RLC members, the California Republican Party went on the record as being opposed to the sales tax increase proposal. It should be noted at this time that, excepting a few, the Republican Caucuses in the State Senate and Assembly also remained firmly against the proposal, and it was defeated in the end.

“The primary reason we issued the release was … to prod the California Republican Party into action,” according to Sonoma GOP Chair Michael Erickson. In that purpose, we succeeded; and the example is set that when activists organize and clamor loudly enough, the leadership has the capacity to do what is right.

Concluded Erickson, “The best service that the RLC, or any other organization committed to freedom, may provide in these most trying days of billion dollar bailouts and neoconservative adventurism abroad is to recruit, to organize, and then to win. Period. Anything other than those tasks is an avoidance of vigilance and not worthy of free persons.”

Michael Erickson is an attorney, a former officer in the U.S. Navy Reserve, and a former Reserve Chaplain in the California Army National Guard.  He is a former Executive Committee member of the California Republican Party.

The up side of being a liberty Republican is that when either party gets elected there’s always some reason to be hopeful. When the Republicans get elected we can hope for fiscal responsibility, smaller government and robust capitalism. When the Democrats get elected we can hope for some progress on civil liberties and social issues. The downside is that this also means we can be disappointed when the parties don’t follow through on the more positive parts of their agendas.

For the last eight years the Republicans let us down pretty consistently, failing to live up to their promise of smaller government and fiscal responsibility and giving only a few small victories on issues like gun rights and taxes. Now it looks like the Obama administration is setting us up for another round of disappointments as they move to the center and pass up the opportunity to take genuinely tolerant positions on social issues.

The Clinton administration was certainly known for its weakness on social issues and civil liberties outrages. Clinton escalated the drug war and established the farcical “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy in the military. His Attorney General, Janet Reno, oversaw a bumper crop of civil rights abuses including the Mt. Carmel massacre, the suppression of the Freemen in Montana, the return of Elian Gonzales to Cuba and the erroneous leak of Richard Jewell’s name as the Olympic bomber. The fact that Obama has chosen to bring so many Clinton appointees into his administration raises the concern that he will follow the same pattern and has little interest in protecting civil rights or making progress on social issues.

Most troubling is his recent choice of DC lawyer Eric Holder as Attorney General. Holder held the second position at the Justice Department under Reno and later under John Aschcroft. Before that, he was U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia. In those two jobs, his record on civil liberties issues was truly abominable.

Holder was one of the lead figures in the midnight military-style assault and forced deportation of little Elian Gonzalez. It was a long time ago, but the images of a little kid being dragged off by force to the dictatorial darkness of Castro’s Cuba by agents of the U.S. government was one of the first things that began to open our eyes to the fact that something has gone very wrong with justice and law enforcement in our country. He also defended a company accused of paying for the support of death squads in Colombia and other human rights violations. At the end of the Clinton administration, he even promoted Clinton’s pardons for 16 FALN terrorists and politically connected megacriminal Mark Rich. Hard though it is to believe, these are just footnotes; there are much worse things on his record.

Holder has been a rampaging drug warrior, advocating much harsher drug laws for the District of Columbia, including making simple possession of marijuana a felony, and harsh minimum sentences for drug users. In one interview, he said, “We really have to concentrate on the - drug users that continue to use drugs, continue to have negative impacts on the communities in which they live, and so we have to redouble our efforts I think in that regard.” His choice to focus on punishing users over dealers or importers is the kind of inhumane policy which has uselessly filled our jails with minor drug offenders.

Throughout his career, Holder has adamantly opposed gun rights, supporting the Clinton efforts to restrict gun sales, enthusiastically enforcing the DC gun ban and even filing a brief to try to stop the Supreme Court from striking down the ban in DC vs. Heller, which said, “The Second Amendment does not protect firearms possession or use that Is unrelated to participation In a well-regulated militia.” He also proposed a new law providing “the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms a record of every firearm sale,” and has advocated federal licensing of handgun owners, a three-day waiting period on gun sales, limiting handgun sales to no more than one per month and even totally banning possession of handguns.

Perhaps worst of all, Holder has advocated laws restricting freedom of speech on the internet, saying:

“It seems to me that if we can come up with reasonable restrictions…reasonable regulations on how people interact on the internet, that is something which the Supreme Court and the courts ought to favorably look at.”

Holder’s record on free speech and dissent is bad in other areas as well. After 9/11 he condemned those who might try to obstruct government power in pursuit of terrorists on the grounds of civil rights; he was even part of the legal team which looked at ways to get the PATRIOT Act reauthorized in 2005. It turns out he also wants to take away internet , as indicated in a 1998 Justice Department memo:

“In particular, priority also should be given to large-scale distributors of obscenity over the Internet. Because of the nature of the Internet and the availability of agents trained in conducting criminal investigations in cyberspace, investigation and prosecution of Internet obscenity is particularly suitable for federal resources.”

With such a terrible record on so many issues, I was surprised to find that Holder had never taken a position opposing gay rights and gay marriage. I guess that issue never crossed his desk. It can be argued that Holder was following the policies given to him by bosses from successive administrations, but he certainly made no effort to question or challenge any of the abusive and unconstitutional programs which he has spearheaded.

For years, Eric Holder has worked to degrade our civil liberties and weaken the Constitution and the values which on which our nation was founded. That Obama should have picked him for Attorney General is a very discouraging sign for those of us who had hoped to see liberal policies on social issues and more respect for human rights and individual liberty from this administration. It’s past time to see a liberalization of marijuana laws and the basic rights to free speech and self-defense should never be abridged. Holder is one of the bad guys. He’s not the kind of change people were looking for from this administration.

If you didn’t like Alberto Gonzales, John Ashcroft, or Janet Reno and their oppressive and draconian policies, you ought to be really worried about Eric Holder, who seems to be their most gung-ho ideological successor.

According to Las Vegas Now, the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada has declared its support for an individual’s right to bear arms, making it the first state affiliate to buck the national ACLU’s position on the Second Amendment.

Gary Peck, executive director of the ACLU of Nevada, said an individual’s right to bear arms is in the Nevada Constitution, reflecting the state’s “long, proud tradition of libertarian skepticism of government overreach.”

The national ACLU disagrees with the recent Supreme Court ruling (Heller v. DC) in which RLC member Dick Heller won his case before the High Court, and sees the Second Amendment as a collective right to own guns ratherthan an individual right.

“I’ll give you my gun when you take it from my cold, dead hands,”
declared the late actor and freedom fighter Charleton Heston.

Why would anyone complain about a program that offers protection against a presumed terrorist threat?

In Washington, DC’s public transit Metrorail system, a new program that searches bags of random Metrorail customers has been in process for the past month. On Oct. 27 Metro announced that it would begin pulling aside random passenger to search bags in an effort to thwart terrorist attacks.

The non-profit organization Flex Your Rights has issued a “Citizens Guide” to refusal on its web site and members have been handing out flyers at Metro stations. The flyers spell out step-by-step instructions on how to refuse a search.

Of course, one of the problems with the new DC system is that random searches simply do not deter terrorist activity. The overriding fact is that, as innocent citizens become increasingly accustomed to being searched by the police, they become complacent and unwilling to question authority figures. This results in an unwillingness to fight back as a result of veneration or complacency.

As fewer citizens put up a fight, or simply refuse to comply, politicians and police are encouraged to further expand the number of places where all are considered guilty until proven innocent.

Three years ago, a challenge to new random searches in New York’s subway system was upheld when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit rejected an American Civil Liberties Union challenge. The court cited the testimonies of public policy experts who concluded that the program passed the “special needs” test of the Fourth Amendment’s protections against unreasonable searches and seizures.

According to Steve Silverman, Executive Director of Flex Your Rights, “As innocent citizens become increasingly accustomed to police searches, politicians and police are empowered to further expand the number of places where we’re all considered guilty until proven innocent.”

Concludes Silverman, “So what does a freedom-loving Metro rider do when asked to submit to a random search in the capital of the free world? Choose to refuse.“

Paul Jacob, a close friend of the Republican Liberty Caucus who spoke at our 2006 national convention in Orlando, was indicted last Oct. 2 on felony charges of violating Oklahoma’s statute requiring petition circulators to be residents of the state. Today he is attending his preliminary hearing in Oklahoma City.

Jacob and his co-defendants — Susan Johnson, president of the petition management firm National Voter Outreach and Rick Carpenter, the proponent of the controversial 2006 initiative that would have set a cap on state government spending that could only be lifted by a vote of the people — pled not guilty.

He released a statement this morning on the case:

“Today, Attorney General Drew Edmondson continues his attack on the right to petition one’s government. We are innocent. We sought to understand and to fully comply with the letter of the law. Indeed, those running the petition drive were advised by state officials and followed that advice.

“Furthermore, the very statute being used to prosecute us is being challenged as unconstitutional. In recent months, statutes similar to Oklahoma’s have been struck down as unconstitutional by two federal circuit courts—the Sixth and Ninth Circuits—in unanimous decisions.”

“Make no mistake: We are here today facing 10 years in prison because we worked for an issue adamantly opposed by the rich and powerful in Oklahoma. The goal of this prosecution is to threaten us and scare Oklahomans away from the initiative process, which gives citizens their best opportunity for real reform.

“But we will not be bullied out of our rights as Americans. We will fight this vicious, politically-motivated assault, and we will prevail.”

Jacob is the former executive director of U.S. Term Limits and current president of the pro-initiative group Citizens in Charge.

Oklahoma’s attack on him is testament to his effectiveness as an activist and should send a chill down the spines of libertarian activists everywhere. For updates on the case, see www.freepauljacob.com.

Why should one be excluded from the Republican Party for believing and always voting for:

• Limited government power
• A balanced budget
• Personal liberty
• Strict adherence to the Constitution
• Sound money
• A strong defense while avoiding all undeclared wars
• No nation-building and no policing the world

How can a party that still pretends to be the party of limited government distance itself outright from these views and expect to maintain credibility? Since the credibility of the Republican Party has now been lost, how can it regain credibility without embracing these views, or at least showing respect for them?

READ MORE from Dr. Ron Paul: GOP should ask why U.S. is on the wrong track

“It’s gratifying to see term limits continue to spread across the country a city and county at a time,” said Philip Blumel, RLC activist and president of U.S. Term Limits, a Virginia-based advocacy group. “And also that another state affirmed their existing term limits in South Dakota, where over 75% of voters voted to retain term limits on the state legislature.”

“Yes, there is a backlash against term limits in New York and elsewhere,” said Blumel. “But only among politicians and lobbyists. The voters continue to reaffirm their support for limiting political power whenever they get the chance.”

South Dakota (J) – repeals term limits on state legislature.

YES: 87,361 (24.27%)

NO: 272,551 (75.73%) TERM LIMITS WIN!

Memphis, TN (1) – Places a maximum of two terms on the city council, mayor and other constitutional offices.

YES: 177,571 (78.23%) TERM LIMITS WIN!

NO: 49,420 (21.77%)

Shelby County, TN (365) – Places term limits on various city charter offices to match limits on county commission and mayor

YES: 273,107 (78.59%) TERM LIMITS WIN!

NO: 74,409 (21.41%)

San Antonio, TX (1) – Extends term limits for city council

YES: 190,417 (51.6%) TERM LIMITS EXTENDED FROM 4 TO 8 YEARS

NO: 178,611 (48.4%)

Tracy, CA (T) – Places a 2 four-year term limit on the city council and mayor

YES: 12,613 (67.21%) TERM LIMITS WIN!

NO: 6,154 (32.79%)

What’s next for term limits? With Congressional approval ratings at historic lows of about 10%, the focus is turning on Congress. To sign a petition for Congressional term limits, please see www.termlimits.org.

While Obama cannot be expected to be better than Bush, particularly when armed with a Democratic majority in the Congress, his ascendance will necessarily send the minority GOP into a frenzy of finger-pointing and soul-searching. This is healthy and overdue. It should have occurred in 2006. After tonight, the president, legislators and party chiefs who led us into this debacle will no longer receive the uncritical loyalty of the party’s base. New leaders will necessarily emerge, and if history is any indication these leaders will better represent more traditional themes of the Republican Party: lower taxes, less government and a prudent foreign policy.

At some point, the GOP upstarts will be the leaders of a new GOP majority in the Congress. In the 1990s, this process took only two years after the election of Bill Clinton.

Refocused by loss, we may find that today’s election was the first victory for an improved Republican Party of the future. Let’s make it so.

Last weekend I spent a couple of days in Washington, DC at the Defending the American Dream Summit, sponsored by Americans for Prosperity. It was a unique experience to be at an event with so many liberty-minded people from all sorts of backgrounds, all united by a desire to bring our republic back to the principles on which it was founded. Although AFP is technically a non-partisan group, I found myself mostly in the company of Republicans who were battered and bruised by the difficulties of the presidential campaign and events of recent days, but above all they remained unbowed and determined not to allow our nation to perish at the hands of reckless government or sacrificed on the altar of greed and irresponsibility.

This conference was the centerpiece of a series of similar regional conferences that Americans for Prosperity has hosted around the country. The idea is to bring together political leaders and the liberty-oriented grassroots to develop a dialog and build a movement to make liberty issues the focus of the political process, especially on the right and in the GOP. The conferences include sessions for bloggers and community organizers, working with groups like the Sam Adams alliance to educate and inform attendees and help them find the resources and learn the skills to be more effective. It’s sort of like a right-wing version of DailyKos’s Netroots Nation conference, which I attended a few months ago.

One of the things that struck me was how many of the attendees were surprisingly young … far younger than the GOP blue hairs who dominate the state parties and younger than the Netroots Nation denizens who average in their mid-fifties. There were students and soccer moms and reformed hippies and a surprisingly large number of African-Americans. It was a diverse and interesting and highly motivated group.

There was a great schedule of speakers, including Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe, who has earned a career rating of ‘libertarian’ from the Republican Liberty Caucus and was one of the 25 heroic Senators who voted “no” on the Bailout bill. Inhofe spent most of his time talking about the downfall of the global warming movement and talking about sensible energy policy, but he was very impassioned and well received. Also impressive were radio talk show host Herman Cain, TV libertarian John Stossel and former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell. What surprised me about the speakers was how strongly dedicated to liberty these politicians are. Having heard them speak I understand more than I ever did before that not all politicians are the same and that there are men of principle who are worthy of our support.

Of all the speakers the most impressive was columnist George Will, who gave the keynote address on Friday. Will spoke magnificently, at least partly off the cuff, but presumably stringing together memorized bits of wisdom from past speeches adapted to his audience and the current times as he paced around the stage restlessly, conveying his frustration and anger at Congress and out of control government and the irresponsibility of the American people with enormous enthusiasm and conviction. Will talked at length about the erosion of personal responsibility and the willingness of too many Americans to look for a handout from government instead of helping themselves, pointing out that “more and more Americans are dependent on a government which they are not paying for,” reminding us that while the top 50% of wage earners pay 97% of the taxes in America, the overwhelming majority of our tax money is spent for the 50% of the population which pays no tax at all. He talked about the fall of communism and fascism around the world and how in many ways with no outside enemies we have become our own worst enemies and drifted away from the values which we once shared. He made the fundamental point which I’ve stressed in some of my writing that our current economic woes are not the result of the failure of the free market as the left would try to convince you, but the inevitable outcome of an overly managed and controlled and dependent economy and of businesses which have lost fiscal discipline and become dependent on government for undeserved support. In his conclusion he said that “capitalism does not just make us better off, it makes us fundamentally better.” Although he was angry and clearly dissatisfied with the current state of the world, Will’s speech was surprisingly inspiring and positive in its overall message.

One event which I didn’t attend at the summit was the rally on the steps of the Capitol to call attention to the bailout and government irresponsibility in general. Busses were available to take attendees directly to the mall, and hundreds turned out for some short speeches and relatively dignified protesting. Congress was not in session, but at least some news media were there to report on the concerns expressed by Americans for Prosperity members. You can get a feel for the rally from the Fox News video presented below.

The Defending the American Dream summit attracted a lot of interesting people. Not the kinds of Republicans which the left holds in their imaginations and certainly not what most associate with the Bush administration. At one point during the closing reception Ken Blackwell began talking about the importance of traditional Republican values and the woman next to me turned and surprised me by smiling and declaring that she was a liberal. I smiled back and acknowledged that I’m one too. It was an enlightening experience. Somehow despite all the pulls and pressures and the mistakes of accepting Dixiecrats and Neocons into the party, there remains a growing core in the Republican party which holds to the values of the party from a century and more ago when the interests of business and the best interests of the people were seen as naturally allied and the philosophy of the Republican party was one of individual liberty, responsibility and prosperity. Some of them might consider themselves libertarians or independents today, but the adherent of those traditioanl values were out in force at the Defending the American Dream Summit.

Well represented within this group were members of the Republican Liberty Caucus, the group within the Republican Party which is working hard to return the party to its classical liberal roots, and which shares many principles with the AFP. Some were there to attend the various breakout sessions and presentations and several were there as bloggers. RLC members in attendance included the following.

Krystle Weeks was there to write reports for her Crystal Clear Conservative blog, which features liveblog-style reports. Krystle is very prolific, so you have to go a couple of pages back to find her posts - she’s written about 20 new articles in the last week. She’s well connected in the Virginia and Washington political community and has a lot of useful insights.

Dr. Bill Smith came up from Arkansas and was writing for his ARRA News Service, which is a very useful resource for conservatives with some insightful critiques of the left. There are some really strong, hard-hitting articles on his site and I’ve added it to my regular reference sources.

John Underwood of the North Carolina RLC was there. I hardly saw him since he was intensely immersed in the sessions and meetings throughout the conference. I did at least manage to get him to slow down long enough for a photo, which is more than I was able to manage with a couple of other RLCers who were at the conference but nowhere to be seen. I also saw RLC member Aakash Raut, who writes at University Blog and is with the University of Illinois (Springfield) Young Republicans. Sadly, he wasn’t around for photo time.

I saw a lot more of David Baumgartner, who is the RLC coordinator for Wisconsin and is working hard on getting his state’s RLC organized and chartered. He’s a very nice fellow who has taken a late-life career shift and is attending law school and expanding his political activism. I suspect he’ll do a great job getting the RLC on its feet in Wisconsin.

With thousands in attendance and a high level of enthusiasm, the Defending the American Dream summit was a great look at where the Republican party and the nation might be going in the next few years. The message was positive, the dissatisfaction with the current establishment in both parties was palpable, and there were not just questions but a lot of good ideas and positive approaches to our current problems being discussed.

A lot of people are talking about change this election. The left would have us believe that the change we need is towards a bigger state and more socialism and that it is embodied in Barack Obama. Yet at the Defending the American Dream summit I saw a remarkably strong movement pushing for a very different and much more positive sort of change. Americans for Prosperity has gone from nothing to an estimated 300,000 members in only two years. As they continue to grow, they are poised to emerge to political prominence in the chaos which is likely to follow after next month’s election. They may not have all the answers, but the folks at AFP and the groups who are working with them do at least seem to grasp the key message that less government and more freedom are the only way to run our country if we want to avoid repeating the errors of the current era in the future.

You can find my full series of five articles on the conference with lots of video interviews at the Republic of Dave.