Rand Paul is in the process of drafting a bill calling for a declaration of war on the part of the U.S. against ISIS. In my view, this is a magnificent development, and Senator Paul is to be highly congratulated for this brilliant initiative of his. Surprisingly, numerous libertarians have criticized him, variously, for selling out, not being enough of his father’s son, throwing libertarianism under the bus, being unprincipled, etc. Stuff and nonesense say I.

Why is it so important that the U.S. explicitly declare war? The reason is simple. If the congress must pass such a declaration before hostilities are commenced, then literally hundreds of people must approve. Article One, Section Eight of the Constitution says “Congress shall have power to … declare War”. If not, and the present policy of “police actions” is continued, then one and only one person need support this, the president of the U.S. (In saying this I abstract from the possibility of his impeachment, or the disobedience of the military, as in a coup de etat.) Very likely, no, surely, we will have fewer military interventions abroad the more people who must sign onto such a policy. The last time the U.S. declared war was in 1941. Since then, there have been literally dozens if not scores of unwarranted imperialist ventures. Almost of a certainty there would have been far fewer of these unjustified actions if each of them had to pass muster by Congress as the Constitution explicitly required.

Note how embarrassing this initiative of the junior senator from Kentucky will be to the war-mongering neo-cons. On the one hand, they lust for battle (when other people and their sons take part). On the other, it will ill-behoove them to so blatantly reject the Constitution. They will be hoist by their own petard thanks to Dr. Paul.

...

Too bad she may never have the opportunity to see this video, maybe she would have a change of heart...

Nah! What am I saying. She will love it even more. No hope.

By Matt Taibbi | December 5, 2014

Nobody's willing to say it yet. But after Ferguson, and especially after the Eric Garner case that exploded in New York yesterday after yet another non-indictment following a minority death-in-custody, the police suddenly have a legitimacy problem in this country.

Law-enforcement resources are now distributed so unevenly, and justice is being administered with such brazen inconsistency, that people everywhere are going to start questioning the basic political authority of law enforcement. And they're mostly going to be right to do it, and when they do, it's going to create problems that will make the post-Ferguson unrest seem minor.

The Garner case was a perfect symbol of everything that's wrong with the proactive police tactics that are now baseline policy in most inner cities. Police surrounded the 43-year-old Garner after he broke up a fight. The officers who responded to that call then decided to get in Garner's face for the preposterous crime of selling "loosies," i.e. single cigarettes from a pack.

When the police announced that they were taking him in to run him for the illegal tobacco sale, Garner balked and demanded to be left alone. A few minutes later he was in a choke hold, gasping "I can't breathe," and en route to fatal cardiac arrest.

Over the past year-and-a-half, Sen. Rand Paul has spoken at historically black colleges, gathered with African American leaders in Ferguson, Missouri after the shooting of Michael Brown, and criticized a justice system he says unfairly targets minorities. His message is unmistakable: I’m a different kind of Republican who’s not afraid to engage with communities that typically vote for Democrats.

Yet in 2010, when he was a long-shot tea party candidate for Senate, and during his first two years in the job, Paul was rarely seen or heard from in Kentucky’s African American community, according to interviews with more than a dozen black leaders in the Bluegrass State, including seven of the eight African American state legislators. Indeed, his much-publicized courtship has occurred almost entirely as the Republican began plotting a potential run for president.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), a potential 2016 GOP presidential candidate, said he’d be happy to work with the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton, on criminal justice reform.

“I have six different bills to reform the criminal justice system and we would welcome Hillary Clinton if she would like to come and help us promote this agenda,” he said in a Thursday interview on CNN. “I’ve been working with Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), [Senate majority leader] Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and other Democrats, and if she wants to join and help to support these bills I’m supporting on criminal justice, we would welcome her.”

Paul generally has few good things to say about Clinton. He refers to U.S. military action in Libya as "Hillary's war" and has questioned whether her husband, former President Bill Clinton, is a sexual predator.

i have him on ignore because i don't want to think about the manner of events required to arrive at a just end.  i am not the batman. i am not the batman. i am not the batman...

I don't think this is good politics. This case was regarding someone resisting arrest and the use of force to arrest someone who was breaking the law. If the man was not resiting arrest then nothing bad (medically) would have happened to him. It has nothing to do with taxes

I met some Chinese the other day. Fairly young, technically minded. At the end of the meeting, i asked:

- Have you heard about bitcoin?

- Yes it's forbidden.

- Well China is the biggest bitcoin country, with the largest exchanges...

- There are some black markets, but it's forbidden.

- ... and the largest mining operations.

- It's forbidden.

- That's just CBOC trying to talk it down...

- No it's forbidden.

Only reason im somewhat bearish on bitcoin is because of the noobs trying to get rich quick with all of their savings.. and we know that pigs get slaughtered so smart money has no interest in making a new top 1% wealthy club... so in reality it should keep around these levels or lower until there is a mass influx of noobs pouring money in causing it to go nowhere but up.. but this will happen just as development keeps going... technicals are good just buy and hold. There are new people coming in, maybe not enoughto cause it to go moon right now but enough and one day miners will stop dumping and the "everyone knows what will happen then" scenario plays out like it always does in every market... except timing will be off for everyone except those who held.

The Alpha testing will be end and the website will launch.
Dear investors,

Thanks for your participation in our website Alpha testing, We are glad to tell you, the website has been successfully through the Alpha testing milestone, so we will open registration, the detailed schedule is as follows:
1.From 2014/12/01, no longer receive Alpha testing application, (The license has been giving but not expired is still can continue to use.)
2.From 2014/12/07, we will release Beta version and open registration.
3.From 2014/12/15, we will close the IPO Flag.
At the same time, after the Beta version launched, the profit will be dividend payments.

Sen. Rand Paul took some heat this week for pointing out that Eric Garner was essentially executed for selling untaxed cigarettes. I’m not sure why this is a controversial thing to say (especially since Paul also explicitly said the video itself was “horrifying”). Every law, no matter how seemingly innocuous, is enforced with the threat of violence: If you fail to follow it, the state is saying it reserves the right to use violence to force you to comply and/or force you to submit to a penalty for violating the law. Every law passed also creates more opportunities for interaction with police officers, the people entrusted to use the violence necessary to enforce the laws. How a proposed law will be enforced, and potentially abused, ought to be considered in addition to the content of the law itself.
[...]

Now, I doubt that New York city council anticipated that failure to comply with this particular law would result in a man’s death, any more than legislators in Indiana, Georgia, South Carolina, or Florida anticipated that seat belt enforcement could end in tasings, shootings, or arrests. But you enforce the laws with the police institutions you have, not the police institutions you want. Low-level offenses are a tool police sometimes use to do sweeps for outstanding warrants, or as part of a “broken windows” strategy of law enforcement. These are tactics overwhelmingly deployed on low-income and minority communities.
[...]

It may be that the lives saved by seat belt laws and cigarette taxes are well worth the added police-citizen interactions needed to enforce them, and any incidents that might occur during those interactions. But I don’t see the harm in pointing out that these laws will result in more such interactions, or in pointing out which communities are likely to be on the receiving end of most of them.

Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) reacted to a grand jury's decision to not indict a New York City Police Officer in the death of Eric Garner by saying he was "horrified" by the video and blasting politicians for passing "bad laws" that "put our police in a difficult situation" in an interview broadcast on Wednesday's "Hardball" on MSNBC.

"I think it's hard not to watch that video of him saying 'I can't breathe, I can't breathe' and not be horrified by it. But I think there's something bigger than just the individual circumstances. Obviously, the individual circumstances are important. But I think it's also important to know that some politician put a tax of $5.85 on a pack of cigarettes so that['s] driven cigarettes underground by making them so expensive. But then some politician also had to direct the police to say 'hey we want you arresting people for selling a loose cigarette.' And for someone to die over breaking that law, there really is no excuse for it. But I do blame the politicians. We've put our police in a difficult situation with bad laws" he stated.

Hillary Clinton allies are focusing on four potential Republican challengers for the White House: Jeb Bush, Rand Paul, Chris Christie and Scott Walker.

Clinton World believes Paul has run the best “pre-campaign” of the group. And the fact that the Republican senator from Kentucky has worked to attract Republicans and Democrats to his cause has made him someone to watch.

Yet, time and again, Bush is the top name to roll off everyone’s tongue.

Mitch Stewart, a senior adviser to the Ready for Hillary PAC who served in key roles in both of President Obama’s presidential campaigns, acknowledged that two contenders in particular jump out to him: Walker and Paul.

“Rand Paul in a primary could be someone that excites a group of people who would not normally participate,” Stewart said.

At a Ready for Hillary fundraising event in New York two weeks ago that drew hundreds of staunch Clintonites and donors, Paul was discussed as someone Democrats needed to watch.

Paul has “demonstrated a charisma and a presence” in the lead-up to a potential run, said Chris Lehane, a Democratic strategist who worked in the Clinton White House and attended the meeting in New York.

“To the extent that there’s been a pre-campaign winner, it’s him,” he added.