Five things Ron Paul wants from the Republican National Convention

It looks as if Ron Paul is going to be an active participant in the Republican National Convention in Tampa this August.  Here’s our take on the five things Paul hopes to gain from staying within his party’s tent in 2012.

4. Paul wants to prohibit indefinite detention

Ben Margot/AP/File
In this April 5 file photo, Rep. Ron Paul (R) of Texas speaks Berkeley, Calif. While he is no longer campaigning in new primary states, Paul aims to continue mustering delegates to the Republican National Convention to highlight the issues he cares about, including banning indefinite detention of American citizens.

In the wake of congressional passage of an authorization to use military force against Al Qaeda and its allies in 2001, the White House asserted that it had the authority to seize suspected terrorists and hold them indefinitely without trial.

That position was codified into law with the passage of the Defense Authorization Act in 2011. However, the Obama administration has issued rules barring the indefinite detention of American citizens.

Paul has long wanted to chip away even more at indefinite detention, seeing it as an overreach of executive power that’s unconstitutional.

“If we don’t change this, believe me, this country is in serious trouble,” he said earlier this month at a press conference of lawmakers who are pushing to end indefinite detention authority.

Paul would like to the Republican Party platform to reflect this position. That’s what he said in May when he issued a statement that he would no longer campaign in states that had not yet held primary votes.

That is unlikely to happen, however. Romney is already on record as supporting the indefinite detention power. He, like many in the GOP, sees it as a means of treating terrorists like military enemies.

“I do believe that it’s appropriate to have in our nation the capacity to detain people who are threats to this country and who are members of Al Qaeda,” said Romney at a Fox News debate in January.

Some audience members at that debate booed Romney’s answer – presumably, they were Paul supporters, or at least people who support Paul’s position on this issue.

4 of 5

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.