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Today's
Stories
January 16,
2008
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Return
of the Native
January 15,
2008
Andrea Peacock
Breach
of Trust in America's Most Toxic Town: How the EPA is Rubbing
Poison Into Libby's Wounds
Wajahat Ali
An Interview with Seymour Hersh on Iraq, Bush Foreign Policy
and the Prospects of War with Iran
Joe Bageant
Getting Out the Bling Vote
Ralph Nader
The Candidate Taboos
John Ross
Zero Hour: NAFTA and Mexico's Agrarian Apocalypse
Elaine Cassel
Jose Padilla vs. John Yoo: Can a National Disgrace be Rectified?
Peter Morici
The Fed Needs More Than a New Communications Strategy
Beena Sarwar
Pakistan's Dirty Tricks Brigade
Robert Weissman
Big Business is Even More Unpopular Than You Thought
Binoy Kampmark
Going Tata in India
Dave Zirin
Dennis Brutus Smacks Down the Hall of Fame
Website of
the Day
David Lynch on the iPhone
January 14,
2008
Ishmael Reed
Ma
and Pa Clinton Flog Uppity Black Man
Roger Morris
Burials in the Sind
Uri Avnery
The
Hands of Esau
Mike Whitney
Bush's Voodoo Stimulus Package
Allan Nairn
General Suharto of Indonesia: One Small Man Leaves a Million
Corpses
William Blum
Oh, By the Way, the Iraqis Don't Really Want Us
Alan Farago
A Subprime Wake Up Call
David Macaray
Are Labor Unions Ready for Prime Time?
Eva Liddell
Getting Drunk with Obama
Zoe Blunt
Road Kill: New Highway Blocked by Protesting Raccoons
Website of the Day
Doug and Andrea Peacock on Grizzlies
January 12
/ 13, 2008
Andrew Cockburn
How
the New England Journal of Medicine Undercounted Iraqi Civilian
Deaths
Saul Landau
60
Years of Empire
Corey D. B. Walker
Barack Obama and the Crisis of the White Intellectual
Col. Dan Smith
Bush, Iran and the Magician of the Tarot
Eric Toussaint
The US Subprime Crisis Goes Global
Ron Jacobs
Television, Murder and Vietnam
Fred Gardner
The People vs. Christopher James Chakos
Stan Cox
Don't Take That Pill!
Jacob G. Hornberger
The Warfare State
Ramzy Baroud
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Joseph Grosso
The Anglosphere: a Special Relationship of Elites
David Díaz-Arias
Imagining An/Other Latin American Left
Stacey Warde
Before We Move On ...
Dan Bacher
Pumped to Extinction: the Decline of the Delta Smelt
Michael Dickinson
Georgie in Jesusland
Website of
Weekend
CounterPunchers Protest Outside NYT Offices
January 11,
2008
Dave Lindorff
Did
Hillary Really Win New Hampshire? More Questions About Diebold
Voting Machines
Paul Craig
Roberts
No
Escape from War and Unemployment
Andy Worthington
Six Years of Guantánamo
Kenneth Couesbouc
Banking on Thin Ice
Jeff Ballinger
Inside the Vienna Consensus
Christopher
Brauchli
Lethal Injection, the Supremes and China
Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Paying No Attention to the Presidential Campaigns
Andrew Silverstein
Bush's Weepy Visit to Jerasulem
Marwan Bishara
Bush in the Middle East
Robert Weissman
The First Amendment Gone Wild
Patrick Irelan
Damn the Small Boats!
Website of
the Day
Hillary and the Superdelegates: Or Why She Wins Even When She
Loses
January 10,
2008
Alexander Cockburn
Now
Nader Claims He Didn't Endorse Edwards
Bob Wing
Marqueece Harris-Dawson
Race Within the Race: Obama, the NH Vote and the Specter of Tom
Bradley
Michael Donnelly
White Women Gone Wild?
David Macaray
Three Big Reasons for the Decline of Labor Unions
China Hand
Bush's Delusional Policy Pushes Pakistan to Brink of Catastrophe
Ayesha Ijaz Khan
Saudi Arabia and Pakistan: Brotherly, Friendly Countries?
Rannie Amiri
Obama, Man of Kansas or Kenya?
Website of the Day
Iranian Video of the Hormuz Incident
January 9,
2008
Cockburn /
St. Clair
The
Empire Strikes Back
Dave Lindorff
The Bad News from New Hampshire: Death By Triangulation
John Chuckman
Pardon My Laughter: Watching the US Primaries from Canada
James Bovard
Stomping Freedom: Inside the Martial Law Act of 2006
Alan Farago
As Florida Sinks: the View from the Titanic
Russell Mokhiber
Why Picket the New York Times in DC on Friday?
William S. Lind
Kicking the Can Down the Road in Iraq
Peter Morici
Beyond the Sophistry: Why the Trade Deficit Matters
Josh Reubner
Sudan vs. Israel: Double Standard on Divestment
Mike Roselle
The Pursuit of Happiness
Website of the Day
Bottles of Tears on the Wall: Steve Perry on NH
January 8,
2008
Paul Craig
Roberts
No
Jobs for the New Economy (or the Old)
Russell Mokhiber
The Black Hillary: Obama is Just Another Political Sedative
Robert Fantina
The Gulf of Tonkin and the Strait of Hormuz
Dave Zirin
Butts on Parade
Shamako Nobel
I Am an Emcee: the Politics of Hip Hop
John Ross
Zapatista Women Encounter Themselves
Brenda Norrell
Apaches Defend Homeland from Homeland Security
Laura Carlsen
Why Bolivia Matters
Patrick Irelan
Remember the Maine!
Evelyn J. Pringle
The Holes in Bush's FDA
Jonathan M.
Feldman
After Iowa and New Hampshire: a Strategy for Rebuilding the Peace
Movement
Michael Dickinson
Playing Soldier
Website of
the Day
Sean Hannity on the Run!
January 7,
2008
Chris Floyd
There
Will Be Blood: But No Justice for Iraq Atrocities
John Blair
Remove That Man! Creeping Fascism in Indiana
Uri Avnery
The Case of the White Bird
Andy Worthington
Who Are the Gitmo Saudis?
Binoy Kampmark
Needling the Convict: Lethal Injection and the Supreme Court
David Macaray
Women on Strike
Ralph Nader
Obamarama: the Politics of the Smooth Mood
Michael Donnelly
It's the War Vote(s), Stupid!
Ron Jacobs
Ron Paul's Run: Is Being Against the War Enough?
Gideon Levy
The Hostile President
Dave Lindorff
A Real 9/11 Cover-Up? Sibel Edmonds, Turkey and the Bomb
Website of
the Day
Plagues and Pleasures on the Salton Sea
January 5 /
6, 2008
Douglas Valentine
Good
Guys in Black Hoods
Kevin Young
The
US Occupation and Popular Opinion in Iraq
Richard Rhames
Saddam
Who?
Saul Landau
Bush Snatches Defeat from Victory
Marc Lynch
Why Bush's Iran Strategy is Failing
Robert Fantina
Iowa, Democrats and the Iraq War
Donna Volatile
Antiwar Soldier: an Interview with Jonathan Hutto, Sr.
Jelle Bruinsma
Norman Finkelstein in The Netherlands
Bob Sutcliffe
Remembering Andrew Glyn, Rebel Economist
Harvey Wasserman
Anti-Nuclear Renaissance
Missy Beattie
Why Obama Can't Save Us
David Swanson
Remembering the Separation of Powers
Jacob Hornberger
The Importance of the Padilla Case
Shepherd Bliss
Survival Tools from Kokopelli Farms
Ron Jacobs
Bleeding Kansas
Poets' Basement
Patti Smith, B.R. Gowani and Peter Buknatski
Website of the Weekend
Jimmy Dean Sausage Call Complaint
January 4,
2008
Cockburn /
St. Clair
A
Good Night in Iowa
Jonathan Cook
War Crimes Airbrushed from History
Paul Craig Roberts
Thinking for Yourself is Now a Crime
Stan Goff
Ron Paul's Monkeywrench
Dave Lindorff
Clinton's Iowa Flop Exposes DLC Myths as Frauds
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
To Pindi Station
Allan Nairn
U.S. Elections Over Before They Began
Joshua Frank
The Failures of Sectarianism
Peter Morici
Economy on the Skids
Mary McInnis
Iowa Cocky-Us: How to be a Caucus Tease
Website of the Day
The Return of Obama Girl
January 3,
2008
Fatima Bhutto
Farewell
to Wadi Bua
Pam Martens
The
Free Market Myth Dissolves into Chaos
Joanne Mariner
The Presidential Candidates and Torture
Zoltan Grossman
Remember the '80s: Social Movements Between Woodstock and the
Web
David Domke
The Echoing Press and Huckabee
Norman Solomon
Edwards Reconsidered
Nikolas Kozloff
Return of the Faux Liberal
Jacob G. Hornberger
The Padilla Case and the Future of Habeas Corpus
Martha Rosenberg
Quit Picking on Huckabee's Son, Michael Vick
Russell Means
This Property is Condemned: a Notice to Those Occupying Lakotah
Lands
Website of the Day
WolfQuest
January 2,
2008
Jeff Taylor
The
Left and Ron Paul
M. Shahid Alam
The Life and Death of Benazir Bhutto: a Pakistani Tragedy
Gary Leupp
Madness Compounding Madness: Calls for Intervention in Pakistan
Paul Craig Roberts
Criminals with Badges
Heather Gray
Georgia's Racist Death Penalty
Fred Gardner
and Shobhit Arora
Dr. Strangelove's Nemesis
David Macaray
Labor Unions and Taft-Hartley
Benjamin Dangl
Fear and Loathing in Bolivia
January 1,
2008
Iain A. Boal
City
of Disappearances
B. R. Gowani
Benazir's Death in Crisistan
Shahid Mahmood
Bhutto and the Press
Linn Washington,
Jr.
Old Injustices Endure: From Crack Sentences to Racial Profiling
Harvey Wasserman
Taking Leonard Peltier to Iowa: the Moral Low Point of the Clinton
Era
John Ross
2008, Already a Year to Forget
Website of the Day
The Thrill is Gone: BB and Gladys
December 31,
2007
Alexander Cockburn
Goodbye
2007 and Good Riddance!
Tariq Ali
Pakistan, the Aftermath
Liaquat Ali Khan
The Perfidy of Pakistan's Rulers
Wajahat Ali
After Bhutto, a Nuclear Pakistan?
Robert Fisk
Who Killed Bhutto?
Ajai Sahni
Myths and Realities About Benazir Bhutto and Pakistan's Dark
Future
Marwan Bishara
You Say Talk, I Say Attack: The Middle East and the US Presidential
Election Campaigns
Uri Avnery
The Beilin Syndrome
Mark T. Harris
Does This Happen in Canada?
Brenda Norrell
Resistance and Censorship
Website of the Day
A People United Will Never Be Defeated
December 29
/ 30, 2007
Alexander Cockburn
Options
in America: Kill Yourself or Have a Baby
Tariq Ali
Indignation and Fear Stalk Pakistan
Fawzia Afzal-Khan
My Encounter with Benazir Bhutto
Gary Leupp
The U.S. and Pakistan After 9/11: Blowback from an Unholy Alliance
China Hand
Pakistan Stares Into the Abyss
Jacob Hornberger
Stop Medddling in Pakistan
John Chuckman
Pakistan and the Failure of Quick-Fix Politics
Missy Beattie
Evaluating Bush with the Bhutto Corruption Standard
Ralph Nader
Who Will Take the Next Step?
Fidel Castro
There Hasn't Been a Day in My Life When I Haven't Learned Something
Robert Fantina
The Sham of Homeland Security
Greg Moses
Beauty from the Heart of Texas
Catherine Lutz
What We Can Not See: Art and Bombing
Kristin Van
Tassel
Seeing in the Dark
Kim Nicolini
Redacted: Brian DePalma's Scream of Outrage
Phyllis Pollack
Keith Richards Runs With Rudolph Once More
Poets' Basement
Landau, Gibbons and Davies
Website of
the Weekend
Driving Karachi in Search of the Perfect Naan
December 28,
2007
Farzana Versey
The
Complex Electra
Wajahat Ali
A
Pakistani Requiem
Binoy Kampmark
Death in Rawalpindi: Bhutto and Her Legacy
Ayesha Ijaz
Khan
Not Dead Yet: The Pakistan People's Party Still Survives
Anthony DiMaggio
Turkey's Bombing of Iraq
Ray McGovern
Creeping
Fascism
Jim Goodman
Biofuels, the Biggest Scam Going
Ron Jacobs
Transcending the Colonizer's History: Iran, a People Interrupted
Russell Hoffman
Mini-Nukes by Toshiba
John Murphy
Greens Gone Wild
Website of the Day
Guiliani Campaign Official: "Only Rudy Can Defeat the Muslims"
December 27,
2007
Dilip Hiro
A
Tragedy Foretold: Will Bhutto's Death be a Boost for Her Party?
Murtaza Shibli
Who Killed Bhutto?
Stephen Soldz
Fallujah,
the Information War and U.S. Propaganda
Bill Quigley
Locked
Outside the Gates
Paul Craig Roberts
The Great American Lock-Up
Omer Subhani
Killing Bhutto: What Happens Next in Pakistan?
Marjorie Cohn
The Torture Tape Cover-Up: How High Does It Go?
Allan Nairn
Cataclysm By Money Whim
Jacob G. Hornberger
Smearing Ron Paul: Shame on the NYT
Norman Solomon
Channeling Suze Orman
Patrick Irelan
Rumsfeld Spills the Ink
Ben Tripp
Pass the Razor Blades
Website of the Day
Quagmire, For What It's Worth
December 26, 2007
Charles Tripp
From
One Saddam to Fifty
Paul Armentano
No-Knock, You're Dead
Rannie Amiri
Lebanon in Search of a Government
Stanley Heller
Brzezinski and Charlie Wilson's War
John Walsh
Two Unreasonable Men
Martha Rosenberg
The Strange Career of Scott Gottlieb
Norman Madarasz
Bolivia Amends New Constitution and Faces Mutiny from Within
Website of
the Day
Cockburn at the Battle of Ideas
December 25,
2007
Patrick Cockburn
Conscience
and Empire
December 24,
2007
Andrea Peacock
A
Dark Ride on the Border
Tariq Ali
Thinking of Edward Said
Uri Avnery
Help! A Ceasefire!
Jill Jameson
Burma is Not Back to Normal: A Trip from Rangoon to Mae Sot
Steve Melendez
Russell Means Goes to Washington
Mike Whitney
The Big Fix
Chuck Munson
Not Getting It About New Orleans
John Walsh
Clueless Crusaders
Farzana Versey
Tony Blair and the Hawking of Religion
Richard Neville
Dreaming of a White House Christmas
Website of the Day
Back in the USSR
December 22 / 23, 2007
Alexander Cockburn
Mike
Huckabee's Ascending Chariot
Ralph Nader
Politics
and Profits: How the Oil Cartel Gets Its Way
Andy Worthington
Intelligence Failures, Battlefield Myths and Unaccountable Prisons
in Afghanistan
Ahmad Faruqui
The Comedian of Pakistan
Bill Moyers
Society on Steroids
Rev. William
E. Alberts
Blessed are the Peacemakers
Timothy J. Freeman
From Kant to Lennon: Can War Really be Over?
Anthony DiMaggio
Democrats Continue to Capitulate on Iraq
Fred Gardner
Molecule of the Year, Cannabiodiol
Paul Krassner
Enhanced Hazing Techniques
Seth Sandronsky
17 Years of Meanness: Repealing California's Three Strikes Law
William Loren
Katz
Christmas Eve Freedom Fighters: Recalling the Battle of Lake
Okeechobee
Michael Dickinson
In the Dungeon of the Zabita
Ron Jacobs
Why Leon Russell Still Matters
David Vest
Doyle Bramhall's "Is It News?"
Poets' Basement
Orloski, Davies and Ford
Website of the Weekend
George W. Hates Santa
December 21,
2007
John Ross
New Massacres Loom in Mexico
Jacob Hornberger
Nothing Can Morally Justify the Invasion of Iraq
Dick J. Reavis
A
Way Out of the Newspaper Abyss
Jeff Cohen
and Norman Solomon
The 2007 P.U.-litzer Prizes
Peter Morici
Business as Usual as Recession Looms
Jack McCarthy
Let Us Now Praise Judith Regan (Even If She Did Sleep with Bernie
Kerik)
Raúl Zibechi
Sex and Revolution
Steve Early
How the Presidential Candidates Made Me an Atheist
David Macaray
Union Aftermath
Patrick Bond
Zuma, the Center-Left and the Left-Left in S. Africa
Lakota Freedom Delegation
A Declaration of Independence from the USA
Website of
the Day
Solomon v. Beck: Tale of the Tape
December 20,
2007
David Rosen
Mitt
Romney's Secret Life as a Pornographer
Alan Farago
The
Huckster and the Wreckage: Jeb Bush and the Subprime Mortgage
Crisis
Laura Carlsen
Standing Up to NAFTA
Ashley Dawson
The Return of the Bread Riot
Wayne Smith
and Jennifer Schuett
Cuba Changes, US Policy Stagnates
Website of
the Day
How to Talk to a FoxNews Reporter
December 19,
2007
Saul Landau
Is
the NIE Bush's Watergate?
Paul W. Lovinger
Hillary the Hawk
Norman Solomon
The Mad Corporate World of Glenn Beck
Dave Zirin
George Mitchell's Drugs of Choice
Marjorie Cohn
Bush Still Spinning Iranian Nukes
Sen. Russell
Feingold
The Iraq War is Exhausting Our Nation
Sonja Karkar
A Christmas Reflection on Palestine
Anthony Papa
Open the Drug Gulags
Christopher Ketcham
Pave the Holy Lands with Good Intentions
Davey D
Britney's Little Sister is Pregnant: Should We Blame Hip Hop?
Website of
the Day
When Republicans Use the F-Word on TV
December 18,
2007
R. F. Blader
The
Politics of Teen Pregnancy
George Wuerthner
Gunning for Wolves in Idaho
Steven Higgs
Can the NAFTA Superhighway be Stopped?
Vijay Prashad
Encounters with Ghadar
David Macaray
The Free Rider Problem
Ralph Nader
Nine Books That Make a Difference: a Reading List for the Holidays
Eva Liddell
Privatizing War Abroad, Invading Privacy at Home
Martha Rosenberg
While the Bodies are Still Warm: Drugs, Shrinks and Shooters
Dave Lindorff
When Impeachment is Out of Print
Peter Morici
The Consequences the Trade Deficit
Website of
the Day
Ron Paul: How Fascism Will Come to America
December 17,
2007
Mike Whitney
Staring
Into the Abyss
Tom Barry
Planning
the War on Immigrants
Uri Avnery
A
Gaza Masada?
Greg Moses
Crossing the Line in Texas
Allan Nairn
Terrorism; Counter-
Terrorism: Excuses for Murder
Patrick Bond
South Africa's Fight Between Hostile Brothers
Stephen Lendman
Police State America
Charles Jonkel
Grizzly Right of Way
Laray Polk
An Inside-Out Crisis in Gaza
Stephen Fleischman
Pawns in Their Game
December 15
/ 16, 2007
Peter Linebaugh
A
People's Penny for the Magna Carta
Howard Zinn
Bomb After Bomb
Standard Schaefer
The Greening of Big Tobacco
Raymond J.
Lawrence
Let's Take Christ Out of Christmas
Alan Farago
Down on Desolation Row: the Vultures and the Growth Machine
Saul Landau
Lord Byron and the Bad Tourists
Jenna Orkin
Lying to "Reassure" the Public: Bush's EPA and the
Post-9/11 Toxic Air Cover-Up
Ahmad Samih
Khalidi
Why a Palestinian "State" is a Punitive Construct
Robert Fantina
Politics By Photo-Op
Missy Comley
Beattie
Resistance Amid the Ruins
Ramzy Baroud
Of Mormons and Muslims
James L. Secor
A Vision for China's Future
Elijah Wald
Ike Turner's Music Won't be Forgotten
Website of
the Weekend
The Alliance for the Wild Rockies Needs (and Deserves) Your Support
December 14,
2007
JoAnn Wypijewski
The
Dirty Cad: What Giuliani's Sex Life Tells Us About Him
John Ross
Iraqi
Refugees Return: One Cruel Hoax
Jacob Hornberger
Terror Suspects Belong in Federal Court
Andy Worthington
Guantánamo and the Supreme Court: What Happened?
Allan Nairn
"Shoot Them on the Spot": Rewarding War Crimes
Dave Zirin
The Mitchell Report: Absolving the Owners
Dave Lindorff
The First Cut is the Deepest
Misty MacDuffee
Toxic Grizzlies
Ben Terrall
What Happened to Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine?
Dr. Mustafa
Barghouthi
Prerequisites for Peace
Website of the Day
Sen. Kit Bond: "Waterboarding is Like Swimming"
December 13,
2007
Paul Craig
Roberts
Shrinking
the Dollar from the Inside-Out
Mike Whitney
Dershowitz for the Defense--of Waterboarding
Ron Jacobs
Blank Check DemocratsL the Great War Funding Conspiracy
Norman Solomon
The USA's Human Rights Daze
Peter Morici
The Dragon and the Toothless Dog: China Doesn't Flinch
Sandy Mayes
Blocking the Strykers: 13 Days of War Resistance at Port Olympia
Franklin Lamb
The UN in Lebanon: Whose Mission Is It Fulfilling?
Jacob Hornberger
Don't Reform the CIA, Abolish It
Nadim Rouhana
An Interloper in My Own Land
Dave Zirin
On Pigskin and Petrol
Website of the Day
Rachel's Needs (and Deserves) Your Support!
December 12, 2007
Allan
Nairn
US Intelligence is Tapping Indonesian
Phones
Alan
Farago
How Sprawl Eats Its Young
Ray
McGovern
Torture, Lies and Videotape
Winslow
T. Wheeler
The Phony Pentagon Budget Cuts
Evan
Jones
The Raid on Great Western: Why an Australian Bank Might Spell
Doom for the US Farm Belt
James
Petras
An Open Letter to Sarkozy on the Exchange of Political Prisonsers
Joel
Hirschorn
The Horserace Fiction: Clinton, Obama and the Democratic Machine
Joshua
Frank
Why Ron Paul Deserves Our Attention
Sherry
Wolf
Why the Left Should Reject Ron Paul
Dan
Bacher
Survey of a Fish Graveyard
Website
of the Day
Men Eating Bugs
|
January
16, 2008
Why Paul Needs
to Grapple with His Own Paleo-Past
Who
Wrote Ron Paul's Newsletters?
By JULIAN SANCHEZ and
DAVID WEIGEL
Ron Paul doesn't seem to know much about
his own newsletters. The libertarian-leaning presidential candidate
says he was unaware, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, of the
bigoted rhetoric about African Americans and gays that was appearing
under his name. He told CNN last week that he still has "no
idea" who might have written inflammatory comments such
as "Order was only restored in L.A. when it came time for
the blacks to pick up their welfare checks--statements he now
repudiates. Yet in interviews with reason, a half-dozen longtime
libertarian activists--including some still close to Paul--all
named the same man as Paul's chief ghostwriter: Ludwig von Mises
Institute founder Llewellyn Rockwell, Jr.
Tax filings from 1985 and 2001
show that Rockwell, Paul's congressional chief of staff from
1978 to 1982, was a vice president of Ron Paul & Associates,
the corporation that published the Ron Paul Political Report
and the Ron Paul Survival Report. The company was dissolved in
2001. During the period when the most incendiary items appeared--roughly
1989 to 1994--Rockwell and the prominent libertarian theorist
Murray Rothbard championed an open strategy of exploiting racial
and class resentment to build a coalition with populist "paleoconservatives,"
producing a flurry of articles and manifestos whose racially
charged talking points and vocabulary mirrored the controversial
Paul newsletters recently unearthed by The New Republic. To this
day Rockwell remains a friend and advisor to Paul"accompanying
him to major media appearances; promoting his candidacy on the
LewRockwell.com blog; publishing his books; and peddling an array
of the avuncular Texas congressman's recent writings and audio
recordings.
Rockwell has denied responsibility
for the newsletters' contents to The New Republic's Jamie Kirchick.
Rockwell twice declined to discuss the matter with reason, maintaining
this week that he had "nothing to say." He has characterized
discussion of the newsletters as "hysterical smears aimed
at political enemies" of The New Republic. Paul himself
called the controversy "old news," and "ancient
history" when we reached him last week, and he has not responded
to further request for comment.
But a source close to the Paul
presidential campaign told Reason that Rockwell authored much
of the content of the Political Report and Survival Report. "If
Rockwell had any honor he'd come out and I say, I wrote this
stuff,'" said the source, who asked not to be named because
Paul remains friendly with Rockwell and is reluctant to assign
responsibility for the letters. "He should have done it
10 years ago."
Rockwell was publicly named
as Paul's ghostwriter as far back as a 1988 issue of the now-defunct
movement monthly American Libertarian. "This was based on
my understanding at the time that Lew would write things that
appeared in Ron's various newsletters," former AL editor
Mike Holmes told reason. "Neither Ron nor Lew ever told
me that, but other people close to them such as Murray Rothbard
suggested that Lew was involved, and it was a common belief in
libertarian circles."
Individualist-feminist Wendy
McElroy, who on her blog characterized the author as an associate
of hers for many years, called the ghostwriter's identity "an
open secret within the circles in which I run." Though she
declined to name names either on her blog or when contacted by
reason, she later approvingly cited a post naming Rockwell at
the anonymous blog RightWatch. Timothy Wirkman Virkkala, formerly
the managing editor of the libertarian magazine Liberty,
told Reason that the names behind the Political Report
were widely known in his magazine's offices as well, because
Liberty's late editor-in-chief, Bill Bradford, had discussed
the newsletters with the principals, and then with his staff.
"I understood that Burton
S. Blumert was the moneybags that got all this started, that
he was the publisher," Virkkala said. "Lew Rockwell,
editor and chief writer; Jeff Tucker, assistant, probably a writer;
Murray Rothbard, cheering from the sidelines, probably ghosting
now and then." (Virkkala has offered his own reaction to
the controversy at his Web site.) Blumert, Paul's 1988 campaign
chairman and a private supporter this year, did not respond to
a request for an interview; Rothbard died in 1995. We reached
Tucker, now editorial vice president of Rockwell's Mises.org,
at his office, and were told: "I just really am not going
to make a statement, I'm sorry. I'll take all responsibility
for being the editor of Mises.org, OK?"
The early 1990s writings became
liabilities for Paul long before last week's New Republic story.
Back in 1996, Paul narrowly eked out a congressional victory
over Democrat Lefty Morris, who made the newsletters one of his
main campaign issues, damning them both for their racial content
and for their advocacy of drug legalization. At the time, Paul
defended the statements that appeared under his name, claiming
that they expressed his "philosophical differences"
with Democrats and had been "taken out of context."
He finally disavowed them in a 2001 interview with Texas Monthly,
explaining that his campaign staff had convinced him at the time
that it would be too "confusing" to attribute them
to a ghostwriter.
Besides Ron Paul and Lew Rockwell,
the officers of Ron Paul & Associates included Paul's wife
Carol, Paul's daughter Lori Pyeatt, Paul staffer Penny Langford-Freeman,
and longtime campaign manager Mark Elam (who has managed every
Paul congressional campaign since 1996 and is currently the Texas
coordinator for the presidential run), according to tax records
from 1993 and 2001. Langford-Freeman did not respond to interview
requests as of press time. Elam, president of M&M Graphics
and Advertising, confirmed to reason that his company printed
the newsletters, but said that the texts reached him as finished
products.
The publishing operation was
lucrative. A tax document from June 1993"wrapping up the
year in which the Political Report had published the "welfare
checks" comment on the L.A. riots--reported an annual income
of $940,000 for Ron Paul & Associates, listing four employees
in Texas (Paul's family and Rockwell) and seven more employees
around the country. If Paul didn't know who was writing his newsletters,
he knew they were a crucial source of income and a successful
tool for building his fundraising base for a political comeback.
The tenor of Paul's newsletters
changed over the years. The ones published between Paul's return
to private life after three full terms in congress (1985) and
his Libertarian presidential bid (1988) notably lack inflammatory
racial or anti-gay comments. The letters published between Paul's
first run for president and his return to Congress in 1996 are
another story--replete with claims that Martin Luther King "seduced
underage girls and boys," that black protesters should gather
"at a food stamp bureau or a crack house" rather than
the Statue of Liberty, and that AIDS sufferers "enjoy the
attention and pity that comes with being sick."
Eric Dondero, Paul's estranged
former volunteer and personal aide, worked for Paul on and off
between 1987 and 2004 (back when he was named "Eric Rittberg"),
and since the Iraq war has become one of the congressman's most
vociferous and notorious critics. By Dondero's account, Paul's
inner circle learned between his congressional stints that "the
wilder they got, the more bombastic they got with it, the more
the checks came in. You think the newsletters were bad? The fundraising
letters were just insane from that period."
Cato Institute President Ed
Crane told Reason he recalls a conversation from some
time in the late 1980s in which Paul claimed that his best source
of congressional campaign donations was the mailing list for
The Spotlight, the conspiracy-mongering, anti-Semitic
tabloid run by the Holocaust denier Willis Carto until it folded
in 2001.
The newsletters' obsession
with blacks and gays was of a piece with a conscious political
strategy adopted at that same time by Lew Rockwell and Murray
Rothbard. After breaking with the Libertarian Party following
the 1988 presidential election, Rockwell and Rothbard formed
a schismatic "paleolibertarian" movement, which rejected
what they saw as the social libertinism and leftist tendencies
of mainstream libertarians. In 1990, they launched the Rothbard-Rockwell
Report, where they crafted a plan they hoped would midwife a
broad new "paleo" coalition.
Rockwell explained the thrust
of the idea in a 1990 Liberty essay entitled "The Case for
Paleo-Libertarianism." To Rockwell, the LP was a "party
of the stoned," a halfway house for libertines that had
to be "de-loused." To grow, the movement had to embrace
older conservative values. "State-enforced segregation,"
Rockwell wrote, "was wrong, but so is State-enforced integration.
State-enforced segregation was not wrong because separateness
is wrong, however. Wishing to associate with members of one's
own race, nationality, religion, class, sex, or even political
party is a natural and normal human impulse."
The most detailed description
of the strategy came in an essay Rothbard wrote for the January
1992 Rothbard-Rockwell Report, titled "Right-Wing Populism:
A Strategy for the Paleo Movement." Lamenting that mainstream
intellectuals and opinion leaders were too invested in the status
quo to be brought around to a libertarian view, Rothbard pointed
to David Duke and Joseph McCarthy as models for an "Outreach
to the Rednecks," which would fashion a broad libertarian/paleoconservative
coalition by targeting the disaffected working and middle classes.
(Duke, a former Klansman, was discussed in strikingly similar
terms in a 1990 Ron Paul Political Report.) These groups could
be mobilized to oppose an expansive state, Rothbard posited,
by exposing an "unholy alliance of 'corporate liberal' Big
Business and media elites, who, through big government, have
privileged and caused to rise up a parasitic Underclass, who,
among them all, are looting and oppressing the bulk of the middle
and working classes in America."
Anyone with doubts about the
composition of the "parasitic Underclass" could look
to the regular "PC Watch" feature of the Report, in
which Rockwell compiled tale after tale of thuggish black men
terrifying petite white and Asian women. (Think Birth of a Nation
crossed with News of the Weird.) The list of PC outrages in the
February 1993 issue, for example, cited a Washington Post column
on films that feature "plenty of interracial sex, and nobody
noticing," a news article about black members of the Southern
Methodist University marching band "engaged in mass shoplifting
while in Japan," and a sob story about a Korean shop-owner
who shot a black shoplifter and assailant in the head: "The
travesty is that Mrs. Du got five years probation, and must cancel
a trip to Korea."
The populist outreach program
centered on tax reduction, abolition of welfare, elimination
of "the entire 'civil rights' structure, which tramples
on the property rights of every American," and a police
crackdown on "street criminals." "Cops must be
unleashed," Rothbard wrote, "and allowed to administer
instant punishment, subject of course to liability when they
are in error." While they're at it, they should "clear
the streets of bums and vagrants. Where will they go? Who cares?"
To seal the deal with social conservatives, Rothbard urged a
federalist compromise in their direction on "pornography,
prostitution, or abortion." And because grassroots organizing
is "plodding and boring," this new paleo coalition
would need to be kick-started by "high-level, preferably
presidential, political campaigns."
The presidential campaign Rothbard
and Rockwell supported in 1988 was Ron Paul's run on the Libertarian
Party ticket. In 1992, they were again ready to back Paul, until
Pat Buchanan convinced the obstetrician to withdraw and back
his conservative challenge to then-president Bush. "We have
a dream," Rockwell wrote in that same January 1992 edition
of RRR, "and perhaps someday it will come to pass. (Hell,
if 'Dr.' King can have a dream, why can't we?) Our dream is that,
one day, we Buchananites can present Mr. and Mrs. America, and
all the liberal and conservative and centrist elites, with a
dramatic choice....We can say: 'Look, gang: you have a choice,
it's either Pat Buchanan or David Duke.'"
Carol Moore, a left-libertarian
activist who opposed Rothbard, Rockwell, and Paul at the late
1980s Libertarian conventions that led to the paleo split, theorizes
that the defeat made them bitter. "They had a tendency to
be anti-PC," Moore told reason, "and it was really
stepped up after they lost. They were really angry and not that
funny."
They are less angry these days.
Visitors to LewRockwell.com or Mises.org since 2001 are less
likely to feel the need for a shower. One can almost detect what
sounds like mellowing in Rockwell's reflections on the high and
heady paleo days, unburdened by ominous warnings of the looming
race war. Nowadays the fiery rhetoric is directed at the "pimply-faced"
Kirchick, "Benito" Guiliani, and the "so-called
'libertarians'" at Reason and Cato.
But perhaps the best refutation
of the old approach is not the absence of race-baiting rhetoric
from its progenitors, but the success of the 2008 Ron Paul phenomenon.
The man who was once the Great Paleolibertarian Hope has built
a broad base of enthusiastic supporters without resorting to
venomous rhetoric or coded racism. He has stuck stubbornly to
the issues of sound money, "humble foreign policy,"
and shrinking the state. He wraps up his speeches with a three-part
paean to individualism: "I don't want to run your life,"
"I don't want to run the economy," and "I don't
want to run the world."
He talks about the disproportionate
effect of the drug war on African-Americans, and appeared at
a September 2007 Republican debate on black issues that was boycotted
by the then-frontrunners. All this and more have brought him
$30 million-plus from more than 100,000 donors; thousands of
campaign volunteers, and the largest rallies he's ever spoken
to, including a crowd of almost 5,000 in Philadelphia.
Yet those new supporters, many
of whom are first encountering libertarian ideas through the
Ron Paul Revolution, deserve a far more frank explanation than
the campaign has as yet provided of how their candidate's name
ended up atop so many ugly words. Ron Paul may not be a racist,
but he became complicit in a strategy of pandering to racists--and
taking "moral responsibility" for that now means more
than just uttering the phrase. It means openly grappling with
his own past--acknowledging who said what, and why. Otherwise
he risks damaging not only his own reputation, but that of the
philosophy to which he has committed his life.
Julian Sanchez is a contributing editor and David
Weigel is an associate editor of Reason,
where this article appears.
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