And the McClatchy papers have done an excellent job of covering a number of issues that others have ignored.

One might also be forgiven for presuming that “pragmatic” Libertarians would draw more overall votes for the party, or increase its membership, or its funding, or the number of candidates it runs, or the number of candidates it elects to office, or perhaps the average percentage of the vote Libertarian candidates receive. It seems all the trends point in the other direction after several years of supposedly pragmatic, big tent leadership.

Here’s a great article I read today in the paper. I think the LP should be pointing out the hypocrisy and cowardice of the Democrats in failing to bring the Bush-Cheney gang to justice and in continuing their evil policies since Obama, Pelosi, Reid, et al. have been in office.

If LPHQ fails to call the Democrats to task, perhaps we could see something on this from the state parties, presidential candidate(s), CLIPR, etc.

What’s up with Dick Cheney?
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By JOSEPH L. GALLOWAY
McClatchy Newspapers
Published: Friday, Jun. 5, 2009 – 6:48 am

If former vice president Darth Cheney had been arrested for any of his multiple felonies, he might remember the most important of the Miranda rights that the arresting officer would have read to him: You have the right to remain silent.

These days, you can’t turn on your television without finding Cheney’s doughboy face on the screen, alternately repeating old lies, mouthing new lies or defiantly confessing to yet another criminal act.

It’s enough to make me yearn for the old Dick Cheney, the one who ventured out of his “undisclosed location” behind a locked door in the vice presidential residence on Washington’s Observatory Circle only to make a speech at some buttoned-down military base.

Most of his unindicted co-conspirators – George W. Bush, Donald H. Rumsfeld, Douglas Feith, Paul Wolfowitz and their assorted consiglieri and mouthpieces, Jay Bybee, David Addington, Alberto Gonzalez, John Yoo, William Haynes II – have mostly had the good sense to keep their mouths shut.

So what’s up with Cheney?

The things he’s been saying are easily checked against his previous public utterances and a growing encyclopedia of investigations and shown to be bald-faced lies. Check out the story (http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/68643.html) by two of my colleagues at McClatchy Newspapers, Jonathan Landay and Warren Strobel.

It almost begs the question: How can you tell Dick Cheney is lying? His lips are moving.

Then, this past week, he went and broke new ground by telling the truth for once. After seven years of insisting otherwise, the voice from the Dark Side finally admitted what most of us knew all along: There was no meaningful link between Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda’s attack on 9/11.

Back when Cheney was insisting otherwise, telling that whopper over and over, he was working overtime to drag America into an unnecessary war in the wrong place, at the wrong time, against the wrong people.

Now he confesses that he was lying about that one little thing in his eagerness to take our country into a war of choice that so far has cost the lives more than 4,200 American troops and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who were caught in the middle when Cheney and his friends loosed the dogs of war on them, and has already cost American taxpayers a trillion or so dollars and another billion dollars a month.

Obviously, then, this is a man who needs all the national airtime he can get to continue defending the indefensible, attempting to rewrite the sorry history of an administration that’s already been consigned to richly deserved oblivion, and confessing to international war crimes and serial violations of our law, international law and God’s law.

Cheney already has confessed that he approved of and helped formulate the White House-run operation that collected and promoted bogus intelligence from Iraqi exiles and unleashed illegal torture and abuse on suspected terrorists. He also said he still believes that detaining innocent people without trial and waterboarding terrorists produced good information, and that the end justifies the means.

It’s fairly obvious that if he or many of the others named above ever set foot outside the United States, they’re likely to end up like Chile’s Augusto Pinochet or worse.

That begs the question of why men such as Cheney and his friends are still able to thumb their noses at the law, public opinion and our Constitution with impunity here at home, in the land of the free and home of the brave?

That question comes to my mind every time I see President Barack Obama sharing the airwaves with Cheney; every time I see congressional leaders who have the power to investigate the criminal behavior of these men; every time I hear Dick Cheney on the Sunday news shows or the evening news.

I hear testimony that one of the al-Qaeda high-value targets who was subjected to waterboarding more than 80 times in less than a month was tortured after he’d already given up everything he knew under normal, legal interrogation.

I also hear testimony that the highest-ranking terrorist we ever got our hands on was subjected to waterboarding eight times a day for a grand total of 183 sessions of near drowning, near-death.

While Cheney proclaims that such actions helped keep us safe from terrorist attacks, there are others, who were either present in the room or read the transcripts, who say we got nothing of actionable value. Nothing worth a pitcher of warm spit.

If Dick Cheney has so much that he wants to confess, then why doesn’t somebody on Capitol Hill subpoena him to testify under oath before an investigating committee or a truth commission. Or maybe we need a special prosecutor who can put him in a chair in front of a grand jury.

Enough already.

ABOUT THE WRITER

Joseph L. Galloway is a military columnist for McClatchy Newspapers and a former senior military correspondent for Knight Ridder Newspapers; he is co-author of the national best-seller “We Were Soldiers Once … and Young.” Readers may write to him at: P.O. Box 399, Bayside, Texas 78340.

Quite common in some places, such as Peshawar. By the way, there’s very little violent crime there compared with, say, Manhattan, on a per capita basis. This was according to “60 minutes” several years ago; hardly a pro-gun rights source.

Of course, there are qualitative factors as well. Say we have anarchy in Manhattan. As there’s no monopolistic peacekeeper, people are free to walk the streets with machine guns. A few random, stray shootings, I predict, would make most people avoid going into public in Manhattan. I suspect most would flee over time.

Or some Ls believe that there’s a right to carry on jetliners. All you’d need is a few mid-air shoot outs to drive people out of air travel.

What if 0 led to an increase in private violence, but that was vastly offset by the lack of deaths due to warring states? I think it’s possible that private violence may increase a bit, specifically in certain regions, but I don’t think it would ever overshadow the deaths and injuries due to state-sponsored political warfare.

von Brunn is the Holocaust Museum shooter. He’s apparently a Truther, among other things.

No, I don’t admit that governments “do all” the aggressing. It’s hard to say how small it’s optimal size is….0, really tiny, or just tiny. If 0 led to chaos in the streets and a marked increase in private violence, I’d not be for 0. It needs to be tested gradually to find the most sustainable balance, IMO.

I do find it interesting that you admit in so many words that governments and their interests solely as political entities are what do all of the aggressing. I think without them, we’d not have much if any of that going on! Of course, people being people, I’m sure there’d be some. And without the power of a State to back the most corrupt people, I think it would be vastly less severe than modern warfare between States.

(Please note, Robert, that I’m perhaps ragging on you more than you truly deserve just because I find such banter to be enjoyable.)

Speaking of Alex Jones, is there any evidence that von Brunn was a fan?

Beg your pardon, but I do not advocate “one world state.” Instead, I advocate lessarchy asymptotically toward anarchy. And I advocate peace. In my judgment, those are virtuous opinions, but I recognize that mine are just opinions, as I recognize yours are as well.

I find your idea that the geopolitical reality is an “anarchic environment” a twisting of the word “anarchic” as I understand it. To me, anarchy is no State. We’ve got many, many states, which do lots of aggressive things to each other and to those in their territories. They claim their monopolitistic actions justified within their borders and necessary to their interests across their borders. Hardly anarchy in my book.

Individual states exist in an anarchic condition. There is no over riding authority to rule each one. If Pakistan and India decide to go at it with a couple dozen nukes we’re all adversely affected. The same would be true for individuals in possession and use of such weaponry. If anything, that ’states’ in this case are the worse actors than the any theoretical individual in possession of such weapons. The only solution by a Capozzi standard of control and practicality would be one world state.

Thus the conclusion I would reach is that nuclear weapons already exist in an anarchic environment in terms of geopolitical reality. The fact that some states are willing to act in concordance to bully and disrupt others from doing so is no evidence otherwise.

But RC, it is now possible to buy a nuclear power plant that I could site in my back yard. Will fit in a 10′ dia hole in ground, sealed, no maintenance, fuel for 30 yrs.

Probably same amount of fuel as a warhead. So it’s now possible to buy a nuke. )