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As Rick Santorum lives out all our nightmares by becoming our frontrunner of the moment, and Ron Paul's campaign (as he has been for a long time for some obvious reasons) attacks him, the old stories of the secret Paul/Romney alliance resurface. 

The headline on this Dave Weigel entry from Slate takes a huge interpretive leap from a fact with multiple interpretations. It's headed "The Ron Paul-Mitt Romney Alliance is Strong." The fact contained in it is that Paul is running anti-Santorum ads--as he's done since Santorum's first sign of unexpected strength in Iowa in January--and that a Washington Post reporter said a few weeks back that the two campaigns have cooperated on things such as timing their public appearances post-New Hampshire vote to maximize TV time for them.

While I cannot prove that Paul running anti-Santorum ads isn't at the sole insistence of Romney-the-puppetmaster, certainly this entry does not support the weight of its headline. (Which may have been cheeky, but certainly reflects an idea--of a secret Paul-Romney treaty--that many are taking quite seriously. OMG, Rand Paul has said he'd consider it if offered the vice presidency!) 

Here's that latest Paul anti-Santorum ad:

First, we should get rid of the often-repeated but never-true statement that "Paul never attacks Romney." See this early ad from the summer comparing Romney and Obama (via images) as just two smooth-talking politicians, this June Moneybomb hooked off attacking Romneycare, Paul slamming Romney's wishy-washyness on Afghanistan in this June debate, and jabbing at his NDAA pusillanimity in this January one.

We should also remember that Paul's campaign has for a long time seen a race that's all about just Romney and Paul as providing the best chance for Paul to pick up the widest range of GOP insurgents, Tea Partiers, social cons looking for a traditionalist anti-abortion guy they can trust, and everyone wanting to tell the Establishment to shove it. While alas that Paul/Romney race is seeming less and less likely with every passing vote and Santorum's relentless rise, it's still something for Paul's campaign to bank on, and it continues to make perfect sense outside a narrative of "Paul is Romney's li'l buddy."

NBC in this oft-cited little piece is making a common mistake in Paul coverage: taking something that's been done and hashed over and treating it like new news or something extraordinary and requiring extraordinary explanation. They are trying to claim that Paul campaign attempts to spread oppo ideas about Santorum in the press and to voters--something that's been going on ever since Iowa--is new, and giving it a not-well-supported interpretation--that Paul running against the current frontrunner is merely a sign of Paul trying to help out the falling frontrunner, Romney. No, it's a sign of Paul trying to carve off whatever portion of that insurgent vote might want someone serious about low spending and limited government.

Yes, it is true that Paul's official paid campaign ads entirely dedicated to attacking other candidates (it's not something Paul-the-speaker tends to do much of, if at all) have been aimed at Gingrich and Santorum, but again that's part of an understandable strategy of path-clearing and an intelligent sense of whose voters might be up for grabs by Paul. It need not be explained by secret alliances, even if, as the New York Times reported last week, the two men have no personal hostility between each other, can speak friendlily, and their wives like each other.

Still, as even the Times concluded:

Mr. Paul has already provided some tactical help: When Mr. Romney began to flounder in South Carolina and was under attack over his career in leveraged buyouts, Mr. Paul came to his defense, suggesting that his critics were anticapitalist. His campaign even issued a press release assailing other rivals for, in Mr. Paul’s view, taking Mr. Romney’s quote about firing people out of context.

What is not clear is how much, and under what circumstances, Mr. Paul might ever provide any more tangible help to Mr. Romney. His aides say publicly that Mr. Paul is committed to winning the nomination. And the two camps are at odds right now over the outcome of last weekend’s Maine caucuses, in which state Republican Party officials declared Mr. Romney the winner by a relatively small margin over Mr. Paul even though some places have yet to cast ballots.

That first graf is the usual sort of thinking involved in this whole "Paul-Romney alliance" idea--taking something that is absolutely and legitimately in Paul's interest, in this case speaking his mind accurately, leaping in to get his voice heard on the issue that was dominating the news that day (that's why you issue press releases) and refusing to jump on an anti-business bandwagon when asked about it and interpreting it as "tactical help" for Romney. Maybe it was, in effect; but that was clearly not why Paul said what he said. The second paragraph I think is a more accurate summation of what, at this point, any intelligent observer should be making of this whole alliance thing based on the actual evidence at hand: not much.

*In other Pauliana, is Paul really the frontrunner in the (barely polled) state of Washington? Says Kelley Haughton writing from Tacoma at Examiner.com:

His mostly volunteer campaign workers have a larger presence in Washington than any other Presidential candidate. They have been out doing nuts and bolts politics by identifying Ron Paul supporters, teaching them how to participate in the caucus process and encouraging them to get out on March 3. In this process, they have been reaching out to independent voters who previously have not thought of themselves as Republicans. The Ron Paul campaign is growing the Republican Party in the state of Washington. 

In 2008, Paul took 21% of the caucus vote in a four man race in the state of Washington. This year, the Paul campaign seems far more organized and to have far more supporters preparing for participation in the caucus process. In 2008, only 12,320 people participated in the caucus. If that many participate this year, given the turnout for these recent rallies, Ron Paul should win the state of Washington.

None of the other Republican Presidential candidates have near the presence in the state and no where near the enthusiasm for their candidate. It appears as if Romney, Santorum and Gingrich are focused on Super Tuesday and are leaving Washington to Paul.

*Press is noting the big SuperPAC money that eccentric libertarian-leaning rich man Peter Thiel is giving to Paul. From the Houston Chronicle's site:

when Thiel gave $900,000 in December and $1.7 million in January, he wasn’t strictly endorsing Ron Paul — he donated in support of Paul’s libertarian ideals.....

In an Endorse Liberty press release, Thiel explains why these principles of liberty and small-government are so important.

“Too often in this country we learn things the hard way – whether it’s putting your nest egg in overvalued stocks, borrowing more than your house is worth, or amassing a mountain of student debt to pay for a degree with no real job prospects,” he said. “With its unsustainable deficits, government spending is heading down the same path. Men and women who want freedom and growth should take action. A good place to start is voting for Ron Paul.”

Endorse Liberty is a group of entrepreneurs and inventors who call for “open, unhampered creativity,” citing innovation as an economic engine. ...

The Atlantic notes Thiel's attraction to the eccentric in his giving:

That the Paul campaign, well-financed but not well-received by voters, would be bankrolled by Thiel makes perfect sense. Thiel, who is openly gay and Christian, has spent his considerable wealth on a number of mainstream and unorthodox causes including the Methuselah Foundation, a research organization that seeks to extend the human lifespan to 1,000 years; the Committee to Protect Journalists; gay-rights groups such as the American Foundation for Equal Rights and GOProud; the Seasteading Institute, an organization set on building small floating countries in the middle of the sea for a "vivid, wilde-eyed dream" of a Libertarian island; and the Thiel Fellowship, which give grants of $100,000 to people under the age of 20 who drop out of school to pursue entrepreneurial projects. 

*Paul doesn't only have a billionaire backer, he has polls in a couple of states showing him beating Obama in a one-on-one: Iowa (where he's the only GOPer beating the margin of error against Obama) and Arizona.

*Roll Call has been hitting Paul with their findings of at least 26 flights the congressman took where he seems to have been reimbursed both by Congress and by private groups backing Paul:

In March 2005, David James called Rep. Ron Paul’s (R-Texas) Congressional office for some documentation.

James’s nonprofit group, the Liberty Committee, had paid for one of Paul’s flights, and James needed a receipt or boarding pass to document the expense...

The office manager said Paul’s Congressional office no longer had documentation for that flight; Paul had sent it in to the House Finance Office for reimbursement. But Liberty Committee had already sent a check to American Express to cover the charge on Paul’s credit card.

“I don’t care what flights the Liberty Committee pays for,” James said, “because Ron never took enough in expenses to come anywhere near his value to us. And this was piddly. But it’s just what it was.” James first thought it was 

accidental and faxed a letter to Paul’s office, requesting that its money be returned for the flight. Paul did repay the $403.70, but the episode strained their relationship and led to a falling out a year later.....

Spokesman Jesse Benton said then it was “possible that wholly inadvertent errors were made in a handful of instances” in which flights were reimbursed twice, but he maintained that “absolutely zero taxpayer funds were ever misused.”....

Paul recently told James that his office is investigating the payments and will return money to Liberty Committee if duplicate payments are found....

James told Roll Call that he and the Liberty Committee now want about $10,000 in reimbursements from Paul. Paul returned over $141,000 of taxpayer money to the Treasury last year from his congressional budget, an increase over the $100,000 he'd returned the year before, and about 9 percent of his office budget.

My forthcoming book, Ron Paul's Revolution.

Arizona. Republicans. Reason staff. Twitter. Go!

<a href="http://www.coveritlive.com/mobile.php/option=com_mobile/task=viewaltcast/altcast_code=bffdfcaf26" mce_href="http://www.coveritlive.com/mobile.php/option=com_mobile/task=viewaltcast/altcast_code=bffdfcaf26" >Reason Staff Tweets the Arizona Republican Debate</a>

Three years after being rescued by a taxpayer bailout, General Motors recently announced some rather ambitious profit targets for 2012. But even if it meets these targets, writes Shikha Dalmia, taxpayers should not wait on one foot to recover their remaining “contributions” to the company. The company’s cash cushion is more likely to go to unions than to investors.

View this article.

Join Reason's DC staff with our friends from Alumni for Liberty and Students for Liberty for a viewing of the Stossel show filmed at the 2012 International Students for Liberty Conference!

• What: Stossel Viewing Party
• When: Thursday, February 23 from 8pm - 10:30pm
• Where: Reason's DC HQ at 1747 Connecticut Ave. NW
• RSVP: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/StosselViewingRSVP
• Invite Friends on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/events/355350801164442/

Come at 8pm to catch up with friends in the liberty movement and have a few drinks. Stossel airs at 9pm ET. If you would like to watch the show in the quiet section of the party, be sure to arrive early to reserve your seat!

Hard and soft beverages will be provided.

Be sure to officially RSVP here: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/StosselViewingRSVP

As I noted approximately five million years ago when I was but an intern babe in the woods, the Transportation Security Agency (TSA) has a use for the property it takes from you, forgetful airline travelers. And it is not just so staffers can start hoarding your weird junk. No, your thousands of pocket knives, snow-globes, and more existential threats such as grenade-shaped belt buckles or purses with gun motifs can be sold or donated.

USA Today picks up the story today, and it turns out that 30 states either donate their seized contraband or have it sold at state surplus stores in order to make teeny tiny dents in their deficits:

Because the TSA had trouble coping with the accumulation, with 10 tons of contraband piling up at Los Angeles International Airport alone, [executive director of the National Association of State Agencies for Surplus Property Scott] Pepperman helped negotiate an agreement a decade ago with the federal government for states to take possession of the surrendered items.

"It was of no use to TSA. It's of no value to them. The cost and care of storage and handling was exceeding the commercial value of it to them," Pepperman says. "Some (states) put them up on eBay. Some have their own websites. Others have auctions."...

Some items have questionable resale value. Items that crossed Pepperman's path while he worked in the Pennsylvania surplus agency until two years ago included machetes, meat slicers and a box of rocks.

"We collected more fuzzy handcuffs than you would ever see in your life — boxes and boxes of fuzzy handcuffs," he says.

But what it comes down to is that it's barely worth it for the TSA to steal your stuff and sell it. All of the contraband, the semi-dangerous and the laughably benign, they will take it, but they're not very excited about it. The article reports that since 2004, Pennsylvania has earned $700,000 for its coffers and:

In Alabama, the surplus property division at the state Department of Economic and Community Affairs got about 3 tons last year from airports in Alabama and Florida. Sales totaled about $15,000 for the year, says Larry Childers, an agency spokesman.

"It's a net plus for us, but not a big moneymaker," Childers says.

Georgia opted out of collecting the objects in 2008 because it was too much trouble, says Steve Ekin, the surplus program manager for the Department of Administrative Services.

"It was a lot of work for very little return," Ekin says.

It's probably is more of a pain to sort through all this stuff than anything, but the TSA sure doesn't need one more incentive to not fix their absurd security theater. 

Reason on the TSA

As details have emerged on the agreement reached between European authorities, private creditors, and the Greek government in order to provide enough money so that Greece pays a March debt bill, it is increasingly clear that this deal will not be enough. As Reason Foundation Director of Economic Research Anthony Randazzo explains, this new European bailout will only delay the inevitable—Greece is going to default on its debt.

View this article.

• Marco Rubio with some real talk on immigration. 
• White House economist Christy Romer wanted a $1.8 trillion stimulus. 
• Syrian forces plotted to kill foreign journalists.
• Santorum surges in California.
• Koran riot death toll up to seven.
• An alternative take on the legacy of Steve Jobs. 

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Moments after White House Press Secretary Jay Carney eulogized journalists who have died reporting from Syria, ABC's Jake Tapper asked him why the White House talks such a big game about press freedom abroad, while back home it indicts whistleblowers and subpoenas the journalists to whom they come clean. Carney denied that was the case, and referred Tapper to the DOJ press office.

The response was blatantly disingenuous, considering that the DOJ is under Obama; and downright disgusting when you recall that before he was getting paid to pretend the president's shit doesn't stink, Carney was a journalist. 

Read the transcript of Carney and Tapper's exchange below: 

TAPPER: The White House keeps praising these journalists who are — who’ve been killed –

CARNEY: I don’t know about “keep” — I think -

TAPPER: You’ve done it, Vice President Biden did it in a statement. How does that square with the fact that this administration has been so aggressively trying to stop aggressive journalism in the United States by using the Espionage Act to take whistleblowers to court?

You’re — currently I think that you’ve invoked it the sixth time, and before the Obama administration, it had only been used three times in history. You’re — this is the sixth time you’re suing a CIA officer for allegedly providing information in 2009 about CIA torture. Certainly that’s something that’s in the public interest of the United States. The administration is taking this person to court. There just seems to be disconnect here. You want aggressive journalism abroad; you just don’t want it in the United States.

CARNEY: Well, I would hesitate to speak to any particular case, for obvious reasons, and I would refer you to the Department of Justice for more on that.

I think we absolutely honor and praise the bravery of reporters who are placing themselves in extremely dangerous situations in order to bring a story of oppression and brutality to the world. I think that is commendable, and it’s certainly worth noting by us. And as somebody who knew both Anthony and Marie, I particularly appreciate what they did to bring that story to the American people.

I — as for other cases, again, without addressing any specific case, I think that there are issues here that involve highly sensitive classified information, and I think that, you know, those are — divulging or to — divulging that kind of information is a serious issue, and it always has been.

TAPPER: So the truth should come out abroad; it shouldn’t come out here?

CARNEY: Well, that’s not at all what I’m saying, Jake, and you know it’s not. Again, I can’t — specific –

TAPPER: That’s what the Justice Department’s doing.

CARNEY: Well, you’re making a judgment about a broad array of cases, and I can’t address those specifically.

TAPPER: It’s also the judgment that a lot of whistleblowers’ organizations and good government groups are making as well.

CARNEY: Not one that I’m going to make.

With Washington state recently legalizing same-sex unions and Maryland about to follow suit, gay marriage hasn't been on this big a roll since Bert and Ernie first shacked up on Sesame Street. When Maryland finalizes its bill, seven states and the District of Columbia will sanction the practice.

But before you bust out the appletinis and Indigo Girls CDs to celebrate, consider that just last year in Maryland - a deep-blue, Democratic-majority state when it comes to politics - gay marriage went down faster than George Michael in a public restroom due to resistance from socially conservative African Americans in the Democratic Party. Indeed, while 71 percent of white Democrats in the Old Line State favor gay marriage, just 41 percent of black Democrats do.

So what's different this time around? Democratic Gov. Martin O'Malley and other pro-marriage legislators took a page from New York's gay playbook and reached around to sympathetic Republicans to seal the deal.

Inconceivable even a generation ago, gay marriage is well on its way to becoming mainstream as a growing majority of Americans now favor it. The only question is when, not if, folks such as Maryland residents Justin and Phillip Terry-Smith will join heterosexuals in the joys of getting married - and divorced - happily ever after.

About 2.30 minutes. Produced by Joshua Swain. Written by Nick Gillespie and Kennedy, who also hosts.

Scroll down for downloadable versions and subscribe to Reason.tv's YouTube Channel to receive automatic updates when new material goes live. 

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Today the Supreme Court heard arguments for and against the Stolen Valor Act of 2006, under which falsely claiming to have received a military medal or decoration is a federal crime punishable by up to a year in jail. The case involves Xavier Alvarez, a minor politician in Southern California who invented a 25-year record of service in the U.S. Marines, capped by a Congressional Medal of Honor. Two years ago the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit  agreed with Alvarez that prosecuting him for his lies violated the First Amendment. Much of today's debate revolved around the question of whether lies about purely factual matters have "First Amendment value," with Antonin Scalia stating that they do not (which is the government's position) and a few other justices seeming to agree. Assuming that is correct, the question becomes whether the Stolen Valor Act leaves enough "breathing space" for speech that does have value.

But since the Court is applying a constitutional provision that says "Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech," this approach seems backward. Shouldn't the question be whether the government has a compelling enough reason to overcome what sounds like a very strong presumption against punishing speech? At the very least, the First Amendment puts the burden of proof on the censors, who must justify their speech limits, rather than the speaker, who need not show that his words have value. (Alvarez's obviously had value to him, until he was exposed as a liar and subjected to nationwide ridicule and condemnation.) As Jonathan Libby, the federal public defender who urged the Court to uphold the 9th Circuit's ruling, put it, "Our founders believed that Congress as a general principle doesn't get to tell us what we as individuals can and cannot say." Of all the justices who spoke, Sonia Sotomayor came closest to the skeptical attitude that is appropriate when confronted by a new crime that involves saying things the government does not want you to say:

What harm are we protecting [against] here? I thought that the core of the First Amendment was to protect even...offensive speech. We have a legion of cases that said your emotional reaction to offensive speech is not enough. If that is the core of our First Amendment, what I hear, and that's what I think the court below said, is you can't really believe that a war veteran thinks less of the medal that he or she receives because someone's claiming fraudulently that they got one. They don't think less of the medal. We're reacting to the fact that we're offended by the thought that someone's claiming an honor they didn't receive.

So outside of the emotional reaction, where's the harm? And I'm not minimizing it. I too take offense when people make these kinds of claims, but I take offense when someone I'm dating makes a claim that's not true.

I think Sotomayor is right that the Stolen Valor Act really is about punishing offensive speech. But even if it were true that "a war veteran thinks less of the medal that he or she receives because someone's claiming fraudulently that they got one," that is not the sort of injury that justifies legal sanctions. "Stolen valor" is, after all, a metaphor; Alvarez did not actually steal anyone's property. 

According to Solicitor General Donald Verrilli, "one of the harms that justifies this statute is the misappropriation of the government-conferred honor and esteem," and "there is also the particularized harm of the erosion of the value of the military honors...conferred  by our government....For the government to say this is a really big deal and then to stand idly by when one charlatan after another makes a false claim to have won the medal does debase the value of the medal in the eyes of the soldiers....That is the government's interest." An interest, maybe, but not one that justifies criminalizing speech. Notice that Verrilli never explains whose rights Alvarez violated or how he did so. If debasing the value of a military medal were a crime, you could be thrown in jail for saying the Congressional Medal of Honor is a mark of dishonor that represents the random murder of innocent people who have the misfortunate to live in countries ruled by dictators who piss off the U.S. government.

Whatever harm might result from the lack of a criminal penalty for lying about military medals, the country somehow survived it for 230 years. Maybe that's because mendacious blowhards like Alvarez tend to be punished by public humiliation. The more often they make their claims, the more widely publicized those claims are, and the more benefit they derive from them, the more likely they are to be exposed. Rather than "stand idly by," which Verrilli portrays as the only alternative, the government could help the process along by making lists of medal recipients readily accessible and calling out liars. If the government has the resources to investigate, try, and imprison these guys, it surely has the resources to say they're not on the list. And if a phony hero is never exposed, meaning actual medal recipients never hear about his false claims, where is the harm? 

The oral argument transcript is here (PDF). Previous coverage of U.S. v. Alvarez here.

Reason Foundation senior policy analyst Shikha Dalmia appeared on The Wall Street Journal's video blog to discuss Ayn Rand's early history in America as an illegal immigrant as well as how immigration policy is playing a decisive role in the GOP race. Air Date: February 16, 2012.

Approximately 6.39 minutes. 

And check out Dalmia's column on the same topic, "Ayn Rand Was an Illegal Immigrant."

Join us, as we get our tweeter on tonight in honor of the Arizona GOP debate, right here at Hit&Run.