A 10-member Massachusetts state healthcare advisory board unanimously recommended that the state begin rationing healthcare to keep the state’s marquee universal health care program afloat financially.

Texas Representative Ron Paul's non-interventionist foreign policy has endeared him to many of those who love the advice of America's Founders. His message to "bring the troops home" from not just Iraq and Afghanistan, but also from Korea, Germany, and Japan, echoes George Washington's words in his farewell address where the first President advised, "It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world."

Except for dissent from Representative Ron Paul of Texas and (to a lesser extent) former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman, the Republican presidential candidates blazed their way in a November 12 debate toward foreign policies where the United States would engage in two new Middle Eastern wars against Syria and Iran, re-institute the Bush Administration torture policy, abolish trials for terror suspects, and allow unlimited presidential assassinations.

President Obama announced with much fanfare in an October 21 address to the nation that "as a candidate for President, I pledged to bring the war in Iraq to a responsible end.... Today, I can report that, as promised, the rest of our troops in Iraq will come home by the end of the year. After nearly nine years, America’s war in Iraq will be over."

Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) schooled former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Penn.) and Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) on foreign policy issues in the August 11 GOP presidential debate in Ames, Iowa.

President Obama addressed the nation June 22 to announce a gradual drawdown of the approximately 100,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan by withdrawing some 10,000 by the end of this year, and a total of 33,000 by next summer.

Congressman Ron Paul issued a blistering critique of President Obama's recent proposal for Israel to surrender its territory to pre-1967 borders and create a Palestinian state.

A "sense of the Senate" resolution by Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky., left) opposing President Obama's Libyan intervention using Obama's own words as a Senator has tied up the U.S. Senate as Democratic Party leaders avoid an embarrassing vote against the leader of their party. Paul's resolution had been offered as an amendment to the Small Business Reauthorization bill.

Andrew Ferguson of the Weekly Standard summed up the neoconservative case against cutting U.S. defense spending in a February 21 article entitled “The Stockman Temptation.” In Ferguson’s article, he recollected that President Reagan’s Budget Director David Stockman had told Reagan back in the early 1980s that he must cut the defense budget in order to balance the budget. “Defense is not a budget issue,” Reagan responded. “You spend what you need.”

Massive street protests erupted in Tunisia in late December, which ended the 23-year reign of dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. Fueled largely by an Internet-connected youth movement, the protests were partly a reaction to the publication by WikiLeaks of documents from U.S. diplomatic cables that revealed pandemic corruption by the ruling party, as well as government oppression that included arrests of lawyers, journalists, and political opponents. Another spark helped to ignite the revolt was the dramatic protest by Mohamed Bouazizi, who publicly set himself on fire on December 17 because of frequent government confiscation of his produce in his street vendor’s business and the government’s refusal to issue him the required vendor permits.