Middle East Intervention

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For immediate release
November 25, 2014

FROM An open letter from Libertarian Party Chair Nicholas Sarwark to Sen. Rand Paul

Dear Sen. Paul,

We agree with you that Congress should obey the Constitution. We should never engage in foreign wars without a congressional declaration of war, a restraint on military action put in place by our Founding Fathers to ensure lawmakers never send our troops to war without deliberation.

But a constitutional war in the Middle East is just as bloody, destructive, and likely to incite terrorism as an unconstitutional war.

Our half-century of interventions in the Middle East have been a colossal failure. We have provided arms, military training, and subsidies to virtually every country in the region, inciting continual war and unrest. This has created a breeding ground for international terrorists that pose a real danger to our country and the world — one that would not have existed had we kept our noses out of the affairs of other countries.

U.S. military interventions have put our troops in harms way, separated them needlessly from their families, and led to tens of thousands of American deaths and casualties — plus many more losses for innocent citizens of foreign countries.

We agree with your father, Ron Paul, who for decades was a lonely yet brave voice in Congress for peace. He was right when he called for getting the U.S. military out of the Middle East.

Everyone knows that you're posturing to get the Republican nomination for president in 2016. But for this long-shot hope of winning the nomination, you have endorsed a roster of hawkish Big Government Republicans — from Mitt Romney to Mitch McConnell. And now you're calling for sending our troops back to Iraq, which will be a death sentence for many of them.

Just how much can your long-shot presidential bid be worth? Is it worth the lives of these young men and women? The Libertarian Party says, "Absolutely not!"

While we agree with your view that no funds should be allocated to an illegal war, a policy of non-intervention remains the only just and reasonable approach to dealing with the Middle East — a land halfway around the world where the United States does not belong.

Your bid for a declaration of war against ISIS is unjustifiable and dangerous. Please withdraw it immediately.

Respectfully yours,

Nicholas J. Sarwark
Chair, Libertarian National Committee

• IRS Restructuring Act of 1998: Section 1203 - Termination of Employment for Misconduct
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10/23/14 FROM The Hill

A federal judge on Thursday ordered the IRS to detail under oath how some of former agency official Lois Lerner’s emails went missing, as well as any potential methods for recovering them.

Judge Emmet Sullivan of the U.S. District Court in Washington gave the Internal Revenue Service exactly a month — until Aug. 10 — to file a report, which he demanded as part of a lawsuit from a conservative watchdog, Judicial Watch, against the agency.

Judicial Watch is seeking a wide range of documents from the IRS, including Lerner’s emails, as part of a Freedom of Information Act request. It has complained that the IRS didn’t tell it that the agency couldn’t recover all of Lerner’s emails from 2009 to 2011.

Sullivan cast his ruling as a compromise, and a potential way for Judicial Watch to get answers without the court wading any deeper into the matter. Judicial Watch had asked the court to potentially compel IRS officials to testify about the lost emails, through a process called limited discovery.

FROM Project to RESTORE AMERICA

The FairTax is a consumption tax unilaterally applied to all Americans at the same rate. For businesses, payroll taxes would no longer exist. Our exports would include a heavy tax for overseas buyers purchasing our products, while our imports would be cheaper for us to purchase. I'm not sure how this would affect GDP, as more information is necessary.

According to the FairTax website, "Under the FairTax, every person living in the United States pays a sales tax on purchases of new goods and services, excluding necessities due to the prebate." The prebate gives every legal resident household an "advance refund" at the beginning of each month so that purchases made up to the poverty level are tax-free.

So a family of four making something like $50,000/year should not have to pay taxes, thus preventing an unfair burden on low-income families. Since the FairTax eliminates both federal and payroll taxes, you get to keep your gross pay amount of each paycheck earned.