Friday, March 8, 2013

Gary Johnson: Taking Liberty on the Road

 
Friends,

Traveling the country over the past couple of years, I have been amazed -- and heartened -- by the response I, and more importantly, the ideas of smaller government and greater freedom receive on college campuses.

Young people get it.  The $16 trillion (and growing) debt our government has racked up will land on their shoulders. The individual liberties destroyed by laws like the Patriot Act and NDAA are their liberties.  And the consequences of decades of foreign intervention will fall on their generation.

A large part of the success of the Our America Initiative and the larger effort to mobilize Americans who share our principles will be reaching out to these young people and giving them a role in the liberty movement.  To that end, on April 1, we are kicking off the first phase of our “Live Free” campus tour.  Throughout April, the tour will take us to campuses from Ohio to New Mexico.  The full schedule is below -- or can be accessed here: Facebook.com/GovGaryJohnson

The time has come.  This week, we saw a handful of Senators hold up the confirmation of the CIA Director until they received some small measure of clarification from the Attorney General that it is NOT acceptable to let the President assassinate American citizens with no due process. It is truly disturbing that such clarification was even necessary, and even more alarming that it took a filibuster in the U.S. Senate to get it.  Nevertheless, for a couple of days, even the mainstream media had no choice but to acknowledge such a fundamental issue.

I am proud that thousands of our followers on Facebook and Twitter joined in the public outcry that prompted that filibuster.  It was a small victory, but a great example of what can happen when the liberty movement mobilizes and speaks up.

In the months ahead, the politicians will be making many more decisions about our rights, our economic freedom, and whether the Constitution really means anything.  It is critical that we be heard as those decisions are made, and our Live Free tour is a great way to tap the energy and enthusiasm I have found on our college campuses.

Of course, taking the Our America Initiative to all these schools, and to many more in the months ahead, is a major undertaking.  Advertising, logistics, travel, publicity -- they all require funding.  I hope you will lend your support to this exciting effort by going to Our America and making a contribution that will help cover our expenses.  Large or small, your financial support is essential to making the Live Free Tour a success.

And, obviously, I hope to see you somewhere along the tour.  In addition to our campus rallies, we will be having informal gatherings at each stop, and it would be great to see you, to exchange ideas, and talk about what we are doing to put liberty and freedom back on the national agenda.

Stay tuned for more announcements about special guests, additional events and other updates about the Live Free tour.  And, please, take a moment to go to
Our America and help make the tour as exciting and successful as possible.

As always, thank you for your friendship and support.


Gov. Gary Johnson
 

Honorary Chairman
Our America Initiative

P.S.  I want to hear from you.  If you have ideas and suggestions for the Our America Initiative, please do not hesitate to be in touch with me.  We have much to do, and your input is important!

West Wing Week: "Jedi Mind-Meld"

This week, the President urged Congress to resolve harmful budget cuts and reduce the deficit in a way that helps grow the economy and strengthen the middle class -- invoking both Star Wars and Star Trek while he did it. President Obama also held his first Cabinet meeting of the second term, announced three key Cabinet nominations, and signed the Violence Against Women Act.

Watch this week's West Wing Week.


Wednesday, March 6, 2013

CPAC’s big, gay headache



CPAC has a GOProud problem.

The small, but outspoken, gay conservative group just won’t go away, despite the best efforts of some of the conservative leaders behind the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).

The American Conservative Union (ACU), whose board grants access to the annual summit, began barring GOProud as a co-sponsor in 2012 — after welcoming the organization in 2010 and 2011.

But why was GOProud barred from CPAC sponsorship in the first place? That depends on who you ask.

ACU Chairman Al Cardenas addressed the question in a radio interview on Friday, attributing their exclusion to “over-the-top” behavior…


Source: Daily Caller

Rand Paul Leads Filibuster of Brennan Nomination

By Ashley Parker
 
4:59 p.m. | Updated Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, began an old-school, speak-until-you-can-speak-no-more filibuster on Wednesday just before noon, and was still going strong hours later.
 
Mr. Paul, who opposes the nomination of John O. Brennan to lead the Central Intelligence Agency, had previously said he would filibuster President Obama’s nominee after receiving a letter this month from Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. that refused to rule out the use of drone strikes within the United States in “extraordinary circumstances” like the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
 
On Wednesday, Mr. Paul did exactly as promised, taking to the Senate floor to filibuster Mr. Brennan’s nomination.
 
“I rise today to begin to filibuster John Brennan’s nomination for the C.I.A.,” Mr. Paul began. “I will speak until I can no longer speak. I will speak as long as it takes, until the alarm is sounded from coast to coast that our Constitution is important, that your rights to trial by jury are precious, that no American should be killed by a drone on American soil without first being charged with a crime, without first being found to be guilty by a court...
 
 
Source: The Caucus (New York Times)

Tuesday, March 5, 2013

Washington Post report confuses one prostitute with another in bid to debunk Menendez allegations

The Washington Post mistook one prostitute for another Monday in a report that initially seemed to debunk a November 2012 Daily Caller exposé of New Jersey Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez.

While the Post said it had an affidavit from a woman in the Dominican Republic admitting she fabricated claims Menendez paid her for sex, that woman was not one of the two prostitutes TheDC interviewed for a Nov. 1 report.

The Post identified the woman as 23-year-old Nexis de los Santos Santana.

The Miami Herald similarly reported that de los Santos “was one of two women who appeared in videos” published by The DC.

De los Santos claimed she was “surreptitiously taped,” the Post wrote.

The Miami Herald noted, however that “in The Daily Caller video, in which she is allegedly the woman wearing green whose face is blurred out, she appears wearing an earpiece and answering questions.”
 
Source: Daily Caller
 
 
 

Hardest College Course Ever? 6,000 pages

Maybe there are some tougher classes out there. But you have to admit, the reading load for this one is pretty intense:
Poet W. H. Auden was a professor at the University of Michigan during the1941-42 academic year, teaching “Fate and the Individual in European Literature.” His syllabus required over 6,000 pages of reading including Dante’s “The Divine Comedy,” Dostoevsky’s “The Brother’s Karamazov” and Melville’s “Moby-Dick.”

Which would be awesome, were it not required for a single college course.
The syllabus (first unearthed by the blog “more than 95 theses“) identifies the reading list as being for the “first semester…”

Nevertheless, 3,000 pages of Shakespeare and Sophocles in four months still sounds dense.
Sounds like a fantastic reading list!

Full story at The New York Daily News.

Source: College Fix

Gov. Gary Johnson upcoming event

 
"I Am A" 
on Reddit, Tuesday, March 12.
 
 
Reddit
 
Tuesday, March 12, 2013 at 3 p.m. PST / 6 p.m EST, Gov. Gary Johnson will host a Reddit IAma "I Am A." 
 
In an IAmA post, Gary Johnson will post what he is, and other people will ask Gary Johnson about himself and about the important issues of the day. 
 
 
The 60-minute on-line event will give participants a chance to ask the former New Mexico Governor and Honorary Chairman of the Our America Initiative questions via the popular website, Reddit.com.

To ask a question, visit www.reddit.com at 3 p.m. PST / 6 p.m EST, Tuesday, and just search "Gov. Gary Johnson".  Governor Johnson is anxious to hear from you!

Please join us!
 
 
LIVE FREE TOUR!
 
Coming this Spring: Governor Gary Johnson will be kicking off the Our America Initiative Live Free Tour.
 
Visit Gov. Gary Johnson's Facebook page for updates on his spring tour across the country. Keep liberty alive!