Next Ron Paul "money bomb" tied to MLK

The first two money bombs coincided with Guy Fawkes Day and the anniversary of the Boston Tea Party, resulting in millions of dollars being contributed to our Favorite Son's presidential candidacy.

On Jan. 21, Paul supporters are being asked to contribute 10 bucks on the day aside to honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the civil rights leader who was assassinated in 1968.

The choice of this date will produce a bit of a shitstorm by Paul detractors as the candidate is quite public about his opposition to the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the measure passed during LJB's day to end racial segregation.

In broad terms, Paul said the federal government overstepped its authority, exercising way too much power over individual liberty, by passing the civil rights law.

As he wrote here back in 2004:

The federal government has no legitimate authority to infringe on the rights of private property owners to use their property as they please and to form (or not form) contracts with terms mutually agreeable to all parties. The rights of all private property owners, even those whose actions decent people find abhorrent, must be respected if we are to maintain a free society.

This expansion of federal power was based on an erroneous interpretation of the congressional power to regulate interstate commerce. The framers of the Constitution intended the interstate commerce clause to create a free trade zone among the states, not to give the federal government regulatory power over every business that has any connection with interstate commerce.

This is tough one.

I'm old enough to remember the "colored only" water fountain and bathroom at the local grocery store we frequented on the east bank of Goose Creek in east Harris County. I wasn't old enough to understand it.

By 1964, I was 11 years old but had little appreciation of the import of the Civil Rights Act passage.

Still, I don't remember having a problem with it as I slowly gained social consciousness, however difficult that may have been growing up in an oil refinery town 30 miles east of Houston.

So, now that a black man (Barack Obama) made history by winning a presidential primary last night, it will strike some as the heighth of cynicism (or at least "bad taste") to tie a political fund-raiser for Ron Paul to Martin Luther King Day.

Sometimes, it's not easy being a Ron Paul supporter. They should have picked a different day for the next money bomb.