Filed under: 2008 Election, GOP, Mitt Romney, lobbyists, neocons, republican primaries, south carolina, south carolina primary
AP Reporter Confronts Romney On Lobbyists Claim
Reuters
January 18, 2008
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdGUSjd3Tmo
“I don’t have lobbyists that are tied to my …”
Associated Press journalist Glen Johnson interrupted at this point to say that Ron Kaufman, one of Romney’s top advisors, is a lobbyist.
“Did you hear what I said, Glen?” a clearly irritated Romney said. “I said, ‘I don’t have lobbyists running my campaign,’ and he’s not running my campaign. He’s an adviser. And the person who runs my campaign is Beth Myers, and I have a whole staff of deputy campaign managers.”
Kaufman is a registered lobbyist for Dutko Worldwide. His clients have included Fedex, Sprint Nextel, Union Pacific and United Health Care.
“My campaign is not based on Washington lobbyists,” Romney said. “I haven’t been in Washington. I don’t have lobbyists at my elbow that are arguing for one industry or another industry and I do not have favors I have to repay to people who have been in Washington for years or scores I have to settle.”
Television showed a member of Romney’s media staff telling Johnson after the briefing that he was “out of line” and not to be “argumentative” with the campaign.
The presence of lobbyists on a campaign team has become a issue because of the perception that they distort policymaking, making it beholden to industry and business interests.
Democratic candidate John Edwards tells audiences he has never taken money from Washington lobbyists in a bid to distinguish himself from rivals Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
Romney has raised at least $229,475 from lobbyists for his presidential bid as of September 30, 2007, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a non-profit group that tracks money in politics. Only Sen. John McCain has raised more among Republicans, it said.
Romney has been criticized for changing positions on policies such as abortion and over the accuracy of some of his statements. In December, Romney said he had seen his father march with civil rights leader Martin Luther King. Campaign aides later said he was speaking figuratively.
Romney: I don’t have lobbyists running my campaign.The truth: They do
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/R/ROMNE..ULT
Edwards and Obama LIE about not taking money from lobbyists
http://noworldsystem.com/2008/..ing-money-from-lobbyists/
Filed under: 2008 Election, GOP, Ron Paul, nevada, nevada primary, republican primaries
AP: ‘Republicans are bracing for a possible surprise first-place showing by long-shot Texas Rep. Ron Paul’ in Nevada
AP
January 16, 2008
A last-minute federal court battle over caucus rules underlines the importance Saturday’s vote in Nevada has assumed as a potential momentum-builder in the Democratic presidential campaign.
Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards are in a statistical dead heat in polling here with little more than two days to go. And Nevada’s sizable blocs of Hispanic, union and urban voters could provide an indicator of where the race is headed on Feb. 5, when hundreds of delegates will be awarded in states with significant minority populations.
By contrast, Republican candidates have stayed away from the diverse electorate and unfamiliar electoral landscape as Nevada voters weigh in earlier than ever before.
No major GOP candidate has set foot in the state for two months, and some Republicans are bracing for a possible surprise first-place showing by long-shot Texas Rep. Ron Paul, the only Republican to broadcast TV ads in Nevada.
Filed under: Britain, Communism, Dictatorship, Economy, Fascism, Founding Fathers, Police State, Ron Paul, US Constitution, US Economy, anarchy, bill of rights, declaration of independence, democracy, monarchy, oligarchy, republic
Filed under: 2nd Amendment, Antonin Scalia, Bill Kristol, DOJ, George Bush, Gun Control, Neolibs, US Constitution, Washington D.C., anti gun, neocons, paul clement, paul wolfowitz, supreme court
Neocons: 2nd Amendment Has Restrictions
Kurt Nimmo
Truth News
January 15, 2008

In Bushzarro world, up is down, black is white, and the Second Amendment permits the government to make firearm possession illegal.
“Since ‘unrestricted’ private ownership of guns clearly threatens the public safety, the 2nd Amendment can be interpreted to allow a variety of gun restrictions, according to the Bush administration,” reports . “The argument was delivered by U.S. Solicitor General Paul D. Clement in a brief filed with the U.S. Supreme Court in the ongoing arguments over the legality of a District of Columbia ban on handguns in homes, according to a report from the Los Angeles Times.”
Clement was an understudy of the neocon Laurence H. Silberman, a federal judge appointed co-chair of the Iraq Intelligence Commission — the official excuse making body designated to minimize the impact of neocon lies about Iraq — and the reactionary Supreme Antonin Scalia, a member of the Federalist Society, a fascist club aligned with the American Enterprise Institute, the CIA asset Richard Mellon Scaife, and a smattering of neocons, including Bill Kristol, the latest edition to the “liberal” New York Times. “Clement clerked for Associate Justice Antonin Scalia and worked as chief counsel to the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on the Constitution, Federalism and Property Rights. He joined the Department of Justice in 2001 and moved into his current position in 2005.”
“Clement is the Bush administration’s chief lawyer before the court, and submitted the arguments in the case that is to determine whether the D.C. limit is constitutional. He said the 2nd Amendment, ‘protects an individual right to possess firearms, including for private purposes unrelated to militia operations,’ and noted the D.C. ban probably goes too far,” WorldNetDaily continues.
However, Clement argues that nothing “in the 2nd Amendment properly understood… calls for invalidation of the numerous federal laws regulating firearms.” In other words, according to Clement and the neocons, you have a right to possess firearms under the Constitution while at the same time the government has the right to make possession of firearms illegal. In Bushzarro world, up is down, black is white, and Orwellian doublethink – the ability to hold two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously – rules the day.
It should come as no surprise the neocons are gun-grabbers while at the same time claiming to be conservatives. “Stop throwing the Constitution in my face,” the neocon sock puppet Bush told Republican Congressional leaders back in 2005 when some of them complained about the USA Patriot Act. “It’s just a goddamned piece of paper!”
Neocon guru Leo Strauss “abhorred liberal democracy,” not the modern version of lefty liberalism, but classic liberalism, i.e., natural rights of the sort at the bedrock of the Constitution. He engendered this hatred of individual rights in his followers, including Allan Bloom, Henry Jaffa, Irving Kristol, Paul Wolfowitz, and many others, a handful now at the very pinnacle of power and pulling Bush’s strings. Strauss’ vision was of “a hierarchical society based on natural inequalities and welded together with the fanatical devotion state religion engenders,” writes Michael Doliner.
Strauss’s political program is designed to counter the ills of liberalism. He believed in, and proposed, a state religion as a way of reviving absolutes, countering free thought, and enforcing a cohesive unity. Strauss argued against a society containing a multiplicity of coexisting religions and goals, which would break the society apart. He thought that ordinary people should not be exposed to reason. To rely on reason is to look into the abyss, for reason provided no comforting absolutes to shield one against the blank sky. Strauss opposed not reason itself, but reason stripped of its secrecy. Reason is for the few, not the many. The Enlightenment, the exposing of reason, was the beginning of the disaster. A reliance on reason, as opposed to religion, produced “modernity” which is nothing more than nihilism made political.
Jeffrey Steinberg expands on this:
The hallmark of Strauss’ approach to philosophy was his hatred of the modern world, his belief in a totalitarian system, run by “philosophers,” who rejected all universal principles of natural law, but saw their mission as absolute rulers, who lied and deceived a foolish “populist” mass, and used both religion and politics as a means of disseminating myths that kept the general population in clueless servitude. For Strauss and all of his protégés (Strauss personally had 100 Ph.D. students, and the “Straussians” now dominate most university political science and philosophy departments), the greatest object of hatred was the United States itself, which they viewed as nothing better than a weak, pathetic replay of “liberal democratic” Weimar Germany.
It stands to reason, then, that the hated, resented, and feared masses should be stripped of all rights, including the bedrock right promised by the Second Amendment, as they may eventually come to their senses, abandon Faux News and propaganda catapulted, storm the castle, and bring the warmongering and liberty hating protégés of Strauss to justice.
As Hitler, Mao, and Stalin realized — in fact as all dictators and tyrants understand — in order to run roughshod over the people and enslave them, you have to disarm them first and foremost.
It is the job of U.S. Solicitor General Paul D. Clement to begin this process.
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=59674
Bush Administration Backs Gun Control
http://noworldsystem.com/..tration-backs-gun-control/


