The Crossed Pond

via Lew Rockwell, via antiwar.com, comes some good news on the conservative front.

Bruce Fein, Bob Barr, David Keene, and Richard Viguerie have started something they’re calling the Liberty Coalition, a group of true conservatives who want to use the 2008 race in part as a national referendum on the worst excesses that have been done in the name of conservatism. You can find their site here.

Their first act was to draft and announce the American Freedom Agenda, a 10-point agenda of draft legislation it wants to introduce in Congress. The agenda:

– End the use of military commissions to prosecute crimes.
– Prohibit the use of secret evidence or evidence obtained by torture.
– Prohibit the detention of American citizens as enemy combatants without proof.
– Restore habeas corpus for alleged alien combatants.
– End National Security Agency warrentless wiretapping.
– Empower Congress to challenge presidential signing statements.
– Bar executive use of the state secret privilege to deny justice.
– Prohibit the President from collaborating with foreign governments to kidnap, detain of torture persons abroad.
– Amend the Espionage Act to permit journalists to report on classified national security matters without threat of persecution.
– Prohibit of the labeling of groups or individuals in the U.S. as global terrorists based on secret evidence.

They also plan to publically call on the various presidential candidates (the Republicans in particular) to sign on to the agenda. In this way, if this is executed well enough, they could potentially turn out to be a conservative/libertarian interest group of the kind that Bruce Bartlett called for not too long ago. Here’s hoping. Spread the word, in any case.

Of course, so far the only signatory to the AFA is the one and only Ron Paul.