An email leaked by multiple active duty personnel shows that the military has issued a warning to troops encouraging them not to take part in the upcoming Veterans for Ron Paul 2012 march in Washington on Monday.

The email, posted to the group’s facebook event page and sent to organiser Adam Kokesh by several unconfirmed sources, lays out several directives on participation in political events by active and non active duty military.

Referring to the event as a “partisan political march”, the insinuation is clear – any active duty personnel, whether in uniform or not, and any reservists marching in uniform or otherwise deemed to be endorsing Ron Paul, could be reprimanded.

The email, apparently sent by Joel A. Weger, Senior Attorney at the Office of the Assistant General Counsel (Ethics) in the Department of the Navy, was sent on high importance and warns recipients “You may wish to advise your command regarding this particular event because of the apparent solicitation of active duty personnel”.

The full email is below:

—–Original Message—–
From: Weger, Joel A CIV OGC, Ethics [mailto:joel.weger@NAVY.MIL]
Sent: Thursday, February 16, 2012 8:17
To: ETHICS@LISTSERV.LAW.NAVY.MIL
Subject: [ETHICS] Partisan Political March

Importance: High

It has come to our attention that a partisan political march targeting military personnel is being organized for February 20, 2012. See link below:

http://www.facebook.com/events/192677970828185/?ref=notif&notif_t=event_invite

As a reminder, active duty personnel are prohibited by DoD Directive 1344.10 paragraph 4.1.2.10 from marching in a partisan political parade regardless of whether they are in uniform or civilian clothes. Reservists not on active duty and retirees may not march in uniform pursuant to paragraph 4.1.4. Reservists not on active duty and retirees may march in civilian clothes provided that they do not otherwise act in a manner that could reasonably give rise to the inference or appearance of official sponsorship, approval, or endorsement.

The directive is a lawful general regulation. Violations of paragraphs 4.1. through 4.5. of the Directive by persons subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice are punishable under Article 92, “Failure to Obey Order or Regulation.”

In addition, DODI 1334.01, paragraph 3.1.2 prohibits the wearing of the uniform by members of the armed forces (including retired members and members of reserve components) during or in connection with political activities.

You may wish to advise your command regarding this particular event because of the apparent solicitation of active duty personnel.

Joel A. Weger
Senior Attorney
Department of the Navy
Office of the Assistant General Counsel (Ethics)
703.614.XXXX

Adam Kokesh, co-founder of Veterans for Ron Paul 2012 and himself an Iraq war veteran, responded to the email by thanking the Navy for inadvertently promoting the event.

Watch the video:

The directives cited in the email were recently highlighted when it was revealed that someone within the military had taken exception to Reserve Corporal Jesse Thorsen’s endorsement of Ron Paul during the Congressman’s post-Iowa caucuses rally.

After mysteriously being cut short during a CNN interview, Thorsen, who has served two tours in Afghanistan and was due to head back for a third, was invited on to the stage by Paul himself to address Paul’s cheering supporters.

Thorsen, while not currently on active duty, duly received threats of reprimand for appearing in uniform with Paul.

As has been repeatedly noted, Ron Paul is the presidential choice of the troops. Paul has received more campaign donations from active duty military personnel than any other presidential candidate, including Barack Obama.

To date, Paul has collected $95,567 from individuals who listed their occupation as one of the branches of the US military or US Department of Defense.

By Jack Hunter

Dismantling a bloated federal government is a primary concern for conservatives today, but former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum has spent a career promoting big government. Conservatives have also made putting an end to massive government spending a top priority as well, but Santorum has a record of championing out-of-control spending. And while many believe that our debt is the greatest threat to our national security, the former senator has always considered everything but the debt to be a far greater threat to the U.S.

In a 2003 Wall Street Journal column “Big Government Conservatism,” The Weekly Standard‘s Fred Barnes explained George W. Bush’s distinct GOP brand. “Reagan was a small government conservative who declared in his inauguration address that government was the problem, not the solution. There, Bush begs to differ,” Barnes wrote. “The essence of Bush’s big-government conservatism is a trade-off. To gain free-market reforms and expand individual choice, he’s willing to broaden programs and increase spending.”

During the Bush administration, Santorum was just as much a poster boy for big government as the president. Throughout Dubya’s debt-doubling agenda — No Child Left Behind, Medicare Plan D, you name it — Santorum was completely on board. And for that entire period, the Republican Party was completely off course.

Heading into the 2012 campaign, the former senator sounds more like the ghost of the GOP’s past, invoking Bush’s name more often and favorably than any other candidate. Santorum has also been beating the drums of the culture and foreign wars, hoping that the sound might drown out the cries of his big-government record. Last week, Santorum even tried to make amends with small-government conservatives by publicly apologizing for his support of Medicare Plan D. It’s too bad that Santorum is running during an election cycle in which conservatives are fed up with candidates who constantly apologize yet never change.

Let us examine the Santorum scam: In positioning himself as the most socially conservative candidate, Santorum has been successful in spending as many taxpayer dollars as the Democrats by seeking right-wing refuge in his pro-life, pro-gun, and anti-gay marriage positions. The problem is, “conservatives” of Santorum’s stripe rarely do much to actually advance these issues. Is America any closer to overturning Roe vs. Wade? Do we have more federal gun laws today or less? Has homosexuality become more or less culturally acceptable? For most Republican politicians, social conservatism has always been more of a fashion statement than a mission statement. You even get the sense that politicians like Santorum know they can’t do much about these issues and thus enjoy the cover a socially conservative agenda provides them. A 10th amendment revolution in this country might give social conservatives more victories than they’ve had in decades, but it would also mean the loss of a valuable election tool for Republicans who always favor impossible-to-pass federal legislation.

The Bush era term “compassionate conservatism” suggests that plain, old-fashioned conservatism is lacking and gives even more insight into Santorum’s philosophy. In a 2005 piece entitled “Goodbye to Goldwater,” Reason‘s Jonathan Rauch explained how Santorum’s rejection of traditional conservatism tied in with the senator’s essentially statist philosophy: “As Goldwater repudiated Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon, so Santorum repudiates Goldwater and Ronald Reagan.”

Rauch adds, “Santorum shows no interest in defining principled limits on political power. His first priority is to make government pro-family, not to make it small … The bold new challenge to the Goldwater-Reagan tradition in American politics comes not from the left but from the right.”

With grassroots conservatives rediscovering the limited-government philosophy of Goldwater and Reagan, Santorum’s Jurassic GOP is more out of step than ever. As a pre-emptive 2012 political strike, Santorum now laughably describes himself as being “Tea Party before there was a Tea Party.” RedState.com‘s Ben Domenech has zero tolerance for such revisionist history. “Does Rick Santorum have any clue what the Tea Party movement stands for?” Domenech asks. “Doesn’t he realize that the big government solutions he advocated for in his book [It Takes a Family] are exactly the reason so many Tea Partiers today don’t call themselves Republicans anymore?” Domenech adds, “It’s precisely the Republican Party of Rick Santorum that even makes the Tea Party movement necessary.”

Rick Santorum represents everything that is wrong with the GOP. He is a candidate who has consistently proven he possesses both the will and the intention to do as much harm to the cause of limited government as the current president he seeks to replace.

Jack Hunter co-wrote Rand Paul’s The Tea Party Goes to Washington. Southern Avenger commentaries can be heard every Tuesday and Friday at 7:50 a.m. on The Morning Buzz with Richard Todd on 1250 AM WTMA.

By Leah Beckmann FEB 19, 2012 10:49 AM from Gawker.com

Sheriff and GOP candidate for Congress Paul Babeu, second only to Joe Arpaio in racism and general terribleness, has resigned as co-chairmen from Mitt Romney’s Arizona committee after his affair with a Mexican immigrant man came to light. Babeu had supposedly threatened the man with deportation in an attempt to keep the affair from going public.

Babeu and Jose (whose full name has not yet been released) met through gay.com in 2006 and had been dating until their recent break-up. Notorious for his staunch stance on immigration and Arizona border control, Babeu had kept both the relationship and the fact that he is gay a secret for years. And though he has denied all claims of misconduct regarding the affair, he said in a statement:

I’m here to say that all the allegations that were in the story were untrue – except for the instance that refers to me as gay…That’s the truth – I am gay.

From PopTech: “Neuroscientist and bestselling author David Eagleman introduces the concept of possibilianism, a new philosophy that simultaneously embraces a scientific toolbox while exploring new, unconsidered uncertainties about the world around us.”

Possibilianism is a philosophy which rejects both the idiosyncratic claims of traditional theism and the positions of certainty in atheism in favor of a middle, exploratory ground. The term was first defined by neuroscientist David Eagleman in relation to his book of fiction Sum. Asked whether he was an atheist or a religious person on a National Public Radio interview in February, 2009, he replied “I call myself a Possibilian: I’m open to ideas that we don’t have any way of testing right now.” In a subsequent interview with the New York Times, Eagleman expanded on the definition:

“Our ignorance of the cosmos is too vast to commit to atheism, and yet we know too much to commit to a particular religion. A third position, agnosticism, is often an uninteresting stance in which a person simply questions whether his traditional religious story (say, a man with a beard on a cloud) is true or not true. But with Possibilianism I’m hoping to define a new position — one that emphasizes the exploration of new, unconsidered possibilities. Possibilianism is comfortable holding multiple ideas in mind; it is not interested in committing to any particular story.”

An adherent of possibilianism is called a possibilian. The possibilian perspective is distinguished from agnosticism in that it consists of an active exploration of novel possibilities and an emphasis on the necessity of holding multiple positions at once if there is no available data to privilege one over the others.  Possibilianism reflects the scientific temperament of creativity, testing, and tolerance for multiple ideas.

Watch this video on YouTube.

Posted by Brad Spangler on Oct 13, 2010

As CNBC reported recently, large US cities are facing a huge shortfall of unfunded public pensions, to the tune of roughly $574 billion. That’s in addition to the estimated $3 trillion gap in state-funded pensions, and it comes at a time of already rapidly declining tax revenue due to a recession attributable to rapacious government spending, at all levels, in the first place. Furthermore, that recession is likely to get much worse according to eighteen leading hedge fund managers who recently published a book of essays, “The Gathering Storm”, in which they allege that the world economy is more or less — well, doomed.

One need not be particularly pessimistic to surmise that if conventional politics was capable of solving this problem, it would have done so already. Rather, it’s up to America’s organs of non-governmental civil society to see it through this public pension crisis and the larger, ongoing, Soviet-style economic meltdown. Specifically, public employee unions can take the lead in a new approach to the problem, marshaling public support for it in order to make government back down where it acts as an obstacle.

Government, at all levels, is bankrupting itself and taking the rest of the country (nay, world) with it. An equity for debt swap is relatively common in bankruptcy cases. In this case, unions can serve as advocates and midwives for a new model of worker-owned privatization that gives rank and file public employees shares of common stock in formerly public enterprises as compensation for the default on pensions that’s inevitably coming, whether they want it to or not.

Public perceptions about privatization and public employee unions mirror each other. Each is, justifiably, often seen by its opponents as an example of special interest looting of the taxpayer — by Big Business as seen from the left with privatization and by Big Labor as seen from the right with public employee unions. In order to bust through opposition from both the political left and right, it would be necessary to demonstrate that the old special interest “looter” mentality has been left behind in the interest of saving civilization.

What’s needed is not just a marriage of crony capitalist “privatization” in name only with 90′s vintage ESOP programs that don’t amount to a hill of beans for the workers. Rather, the particular needs and concerns arising from this crisis (and the political stalemates that led to it) point the way to a new type of worker-owned company we can call Free Workers Syndicates, to borrow a term from J. Neil Schulman’s novel of free market anarchist revolution, “Alongside Night”.

In order to convincingly make the case for such a radical approach, Free Workers Syndicates could not be “public-private partnerships”. They would have to be genuinely market-based entities rather than political entities. They would have to renounce tax-funding, subsidies, politically-enforced monopoly status and politically-granted privilege; embracing the prospect of fully open competition from any and all rivals and showing confidence in their own ability to satisfy the desires of individual consumers. They would have to remind the public that firefighters take risks and save lives, that garbage pickup is a job nobody likes and that lives depend on the maintenance of the existing municipal drinking water systems — in short, that rank and file public employees are productive people who deserve to be freed from the failing business model of political service provision.
Perhaps most importantly, Free Workers Syndicates ought to reject the corporate form altogether, acknowledging that corporate charters are indirect subsidies in the form of a grant of limited liability — bestowed by the same government they need to draw a line demarcating themselves from. Attendees at a series of Workers’ Congresses called by public employee unions could create such syndicates as self-proclaimed business entities by signing Operating Agreements among themselves in place of government-granted charters, then issuing stock as they see fit to their members and daring the SEC to stop them.

If public employee unions genuinely want to represent the interests of their members, they ought to be sounding the alarm to man the lifeboats and prepare to abandon the ship of state.

Citations to this article:

• Frank Keegan, Proposals to solve public pension crisis show magnitude of catastrophe, Watchdog.org, 21 Oct 2010

The State Column | Saturday, February 18, 2012

Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul defeated former House Speaker Newt Gingrich Saturday to win a Georgia straw poll conducted by the Gwinnett County Republican Party, Suwanee Patch reports.

Mr. Paul bested Mr. Gingrich, a former Georgia congressman, with 115 votes. The Georgia Republican came in second with 73 votes and former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum finished in third with 60 votes. Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney finished at the bottom of the Republican pack with 25 votes.

The results of the Georgia straw poll suggest that the latest Georgia polls may not be accurately measuring Mr. Paul’s support in the Peach State. A recent Landmark/Rosetta Stone poll of likely voters in the Georgia Republican primary found Mr. Paul with 5 percent of the votes and Mr. Gingrich with 35 percent of the votes. Other Peach State polls have found Mr. Gingrich with more than 40 percent of the votes.

Mr. Paul’s victory over Mr. Gingrich in the Georgia straw poll is enhanced by the fact that the Georgia Republican spoke later in the day at the same school where the straw poll was conducted.

Mr. Gingrich slammed President Barack Obama’s energy policies while speaking to supporters at Collins Hill High. The Georgia Republican said that the “left has a phobia about oil as an industry” and that Mr. Obama’s energy policies have hurt America’s oil industry.

While Mr. Gingrich has been campaigning in the South where he is expected to win several states, Mr. Paul has been campaigning in the Pacific Northwest. The former Air Force surgeon slammed the war on drugs Thursday.

“If we are allowed to deal with our eternity and all that we believe in spiritually, and if we’re allowed to read any book that we want under freedom of speech, why is it we can’t put into our body whatever we want?” Mr. Paul posited to a group of supporters in Vancouver, Washington, according to The Associated Press. The Texas congressman will face the remaining Republican candidates in the Washington Republican caucuses on March 3rd.

Mr. Paul’s victory in the Georgia straw poll is another example of the mobility and organization of his supporters. The Texas congressman has won numerous online and offline straw polls throughout the 2012 presidential race.