Rep. Ron Paul, G.O.P. Loner, Comes In From Cold

[BridgeTheGap]

(disclaimer - I do not agree that government should stay out of the economy or that we should go back to the gold standard. I do agree that we need to curtail our military adventures and that the Fed should be audited. btg)

WASHINGTON — As virtually all of Washington was declaring WikiLeaks’s disclosures of secret diplomatic cables an act of treason, Representative Ron Paul was applauding the organization for exposing the United States’ “delusional foreign policy.”

For this, the conservative blog RedState dubbed him “Al Qaeda’s favorite member of Congress.”

It was hardly the first time that Mr. Paul had marched to his own beat. During his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008, he was best remembered for declaring in a debate that the 9/11 attacks were the Muslim world’s response to American military intervention around the globe. A fellow candidate, former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani of New York, interrupted and demanded that he take back the words — a request that Mr. Paul refused.

During his 20 years in Congress, Mr. Paul has staked out the lonely end of 434-to-1 votes against legislation that he considers unconstitutional, even on issues as ceremonial as granting Mother Teresa a Congressional Gold Medal. His colleagues have dubbed him “Dr. No,” but his wife will insist that they have the spelling wrong: he is really Dr. Know.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/13/us/politics/13paul.html?_r=1

[cpwm17]

1. Dennis Kucinich for President

and Ron Paul for Secretary of State. Both of them would be big improvements from what we have now.