Chicago Daily Observer

While on the county payroll, a top urologist at Cook County Hospital solicited nearly $1 million from drug companies over the last decade for his private foundation.

Dr. Paul S. Ray’s pitch was that the money would go toward medical research and education.

But most of the money hasn’t gone to health care at all. Instead, Ray invested it—mostly in Tony Rezko.

In a formal announcement that was foreshadowed by his low popularity in the Republican primaries, Ron Paul will tell his supporters that his campaign for president is over.

Paul (R-Texas) will instead launch a different kind of campaign that aims to encourage the election of Republicans who show a Libertarian lean to offices across the country.

In a letter to supporters on his new website, “Ron Paul’s Campaign for Liberty,” Paul says the past 17 months were the most exciting of his life.

“With the primary season now over, the presidential campaign is at an end,” Paul writes. “But the larger campaign for freedom is just getting started.”

He’s addressing CPAC now. Oh, if he’d only stop talking about that gold standard. He has so many better things to say…

On the other hand, I am impressed by how warmly his views on foreign policy are being greeted. And I love what he said about abortion:

“Life begins at conception. That’s not a political statement — that’s a scientific statement.”

Here is part of my fantasy Ron Paul speech, the one I wish he’d give:

I was driving east on Independence Avenue the other day. On the right, I first saw the Department of Agriculture. It has more employees than there are farmers in the United States. Then I saw the Department of Energy, which has never produced a single watt of electricity.

Every day I meet Republicans who believe somehow that things are as good for them today as they were in the hey-day of the Reagan years…so they allow that if McCain is nominated, they would “hold their nose’ and they cannot abide Huckabee and Romney is a issues shifter.

They should understand that 2008 may well be 1974, the Watergate year, and they shouldn’t be so cocky but be glad that anybody of any quality decided to run for president on their party’s line. Americans regard the Democrats as more competent than the Republicans by a margin of 5 to 3, more ethical by 2 to 1. They prefer Democratic policies to Republican ones from healthcare to taxes. The economy may be tailing south. The Republicans have a Rudy Giuliani with too much personal baggage plus prostate cancer. Fred Thompson is the first actor candidate to pout people to sleep ... Read More...

I’m wrapping up my proctoscopic series on all the presidential candidates with this four-fer-one column on the remaining Republicans who—though in some cases not without interest—are totally hopeless and do not merit much more attention. (See, I can do political-editorial triage just like the mainstream media.)

In many ways the most successful of the also-rans just dropped out of the race. He is U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo of Colorado, now completing his 5th House term. Of course, that’s two terms more than he pledged to serve: He was Colorado’s champion of term-limits back in 1998 when he won his seat, then, in 2004, broke his solemn promise to serve only three terms. I’m shocked!... shocked!...to report a politician broke a solemn promise.

Tancredo was a single-issue candidate, but his issue—illegal immigration—is now the leading test on the GOP side of the divide. All the better-known candidates are joining in, ... Read More...

I’m wrapping up my proctoscopic series on all the presidential candidates with this four-fer-one column on the remaining Republicans who—though in some cases not without interest—are totally hopeless and do not merit much more attention. (See, I can do political-editorial triage just like the mainstream media.)

In many ways the most successful of the also-rans just dropped out of the race. He is U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo of Colorado, now completing his 5th House term. Of course, that’s two terms more than he pledged to serve: He was Colorado’s champion of term-limits back in 1998 when he won his seat, then, in 2004, broke his solemn promise to serve only three terms. I’m shocked!... shocked!...to report a politician broke a solemn promise.

Tancredo was a single-issue candidate, but his issue—illegal immigration—is now the leading test on the GOP side of the divide. All the better-known candidates are joining in, ... Read More...

An extraordinary incident unfolded in the state of Oklahoma on Oct. 2. Three individuals were arrested, shackled and arraigned. Their crime: trying to curb the spending excesses of Sooner State politicians. They were accused of violating an arcane and certainly unconstitutional law that imposes restrictions on who can circulate petitions in the state

The case of Paul Jacob, the petitioner from the Chicago based Sam Adams Alliance, is the lead editorial in the Wall Street Journal today.

You may also read our archives on Paul Jacob by clicking on the Tag below.

Grass Roots political organizer Paul Jacobs, the Senior Advisor at the Sam Adams Foundation, has been indicted on charges related to his work leading a petition drive in Oklahoma. Jacobs is charged with a felony of conspiring against the State of Oklahoma in collecting signatures in favor of a Taxpayer Bill of Rights by an out of state resident. After 300,000 signatures were gathered by Jacobs and others, signatures removed by the Oklahoma Supreme Court keeping the petition from making it to a ballot.

Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson has handed down the indictment to Jacobs and two other political organizers stating “Oklahoma law requires anyone who circulates a petition be a qualified elector, that means a U.S. citizen over the age of 18 and a resident of Oklahoma.” Edmondson charged that the petitioners “came into the state with the intent to leave the state ... Read More...

As I view the contradictory and relativist muddle that is the Ron Paul presidential campaign, I am grateful that I eschewed libertarianism as a political principle in favor of constitutional conservatism. Notwithstanding that, I confess finding much to admire about Ron Paul, the 1988 Libertarian Party presidential nominee.

He is a M. D. specializing in obstetrics, pro-life, who served his country as an Air Force flight surgeon.

He is adamant about abolishing much of the federal government based upon lack of constitutional foundation and ineptness and inefficiency. Here’s a list of things Paul wants to end because they have had failures in the past, or he sees them as useless:

the CIA,

the FBI,

the Department of Homeland Security,

the FDA,

the IRS,

Medicare,

DEA,

Our membership in the UN,

in NATO,

in NAFTA

in CAFTA.

That’s the short list.

This is ... Read More...

His forthright defense of freedom emboldens us all.

When Alan Keyes was running against Barack Obama for US Senate, a friend of mine from Indianapolis called me to ask if I was supporting Keyes. “No”, I replied, “He is too far out there”. “Too far out there?” my friend said “Barack Obama represents the worst school districts in the United States and campaigns against education reform, all the while sending his own kids to private school, are you sure it is Keyes who is ‘out there’”. It was a good point. Sometime the more radical idea is full of common sense, yet political inertia has convinced us such issues as taxation, education, and foreign policy are best served by the status quo, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

In many cases, Ron Paul comes across as having a much clearer vision of the United States than any of his post-modernist ... Read More...

Far from Conveying Freedom, His Group Gives a Whiff of Decadent Self-Indulgence

For one with a long history of conservative Republican political participation…and mine goes back to the 1952 presidential campaign of Robert Taft…the rally Saturday afternoon at the Hyatt-Regency hotel celebrating Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) could not have been a greater shock. Taft, son of the 27th president, was constitutionally (and this word is used advisably) unable to demagogue. His message of hoped-for return to the policies of the past did not contain many personal incentives. In place of entitlements he advocated work, instead of farm subsidies he emphasized the free market. He accepted Social Security and few other accoutrements of the corporate state but not many. He opposed expansion of the size of government, soaking the rich, a multiplicity of federal alphabetical agencies that robbed personal initiative.. He preached the hard lessons of fiscal rectitude. Most particularly ... Read More...

Congressman Ron Paul’s contribution to American political life is more significant than those made by all the other presidential candidates—of both parties—combined. Romney, McCain, Clinton, Obama, et al, are dancing around the Iraq disaster that has cost 3,700 American lives, left maimed tens of thousands more, and provoked greater than ever hatred of America by the Islamic world. These candidates are ignoring the colossal failure of the government to stop the violent crime and depressed wages that are the bitter fruits of unfettered immigration. As they debate whose scheme is going to provide more pills for old people (the single wealthiest age cohort in the nation), Congressman Ron Paul stands radically apart from all of them.
I say “radically,” for Paul’s contribution has been to call to the fore of mainstream political discourse a proper understanding of America’s political roots. Since Abraham Lincoln expanded the authority of the central ... Read More...