Glenn Greenwald on Ron Paul

Glenn Greenwald writes about The Ron Paul Phenomenon.

"By far the most significant and interesting political story of the past 24 hours is the extraordinary, record-breaking outpouring of support for Ron Paul's presidential campaign. Therefore, it is being ignored by much of our establishment press -- not a single article about it in The New York Times or The Washington Post (though it is discussed on a couple of their blogs), nor even a mention of it on the websites of CNN or CBS News (which found space to report on Stephen Colbert's non-candidacy). But MSNBC and Fox News did at least both post the AP article on the Paul story."

Cenk Uygur has a bit more on this. Greenwald lays out Paul's position as a principled libertarian for a limited federal government. If it's not spelled out in the constitution the federal government can't do it. If you want them to, pass an amendment. I respect Paul's positions and wish more candidates were as principled, but I'm a federalist.

He's serious about getting rid of the IRS. There's something appealing about that, but I think I'd want to streamline the amendment process pretty quickly. I believe that some things can be more efficient if centralized rather than duplicated 50 times. I like having the FDA, CDC, SEC, FCC, EPA, NWS and NASA at the federal level. Maybe not everything they do but the ideas. Can you imagine how difficult it would be for businesses to cope with 50 different banking regulations? If Paul's ok with these kinds of things (and I'm not sure he is) or we can have some fast amendments, then I could consider voting for him.