|
| Important Issues: |
 | Civil Liberties & the Rule of Law: The United States has long been a living symbol of civil liberties. In our 230 years as a nation, we have cherished and built upon the legacy of due process and the rule of law that we inherited from the English Common Law tradition. We rose up and became a new nation in 1776 as much to preserve our existing liberties as to bring to life the new concepts of equality and human rights developed by the thinkers of the Enlightenment. Together with our allies in Europe and throughout the world, we have pioneered the concept of international law, which hold the promise of a world in which international differences can be settled without war. In the course of our history, our nation has committed a number of deep moral wrongs including slavery and segregation. However, the ideal of America has always been that of "a nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." Much of the story of American history is the story of the struggle for progress towards that ideal and preservation of liberties gained in that struggle.
Regrettably, over the last five and a half years, the course of American liberty and justice has gotten dangerously off track. Cynical politicians in Washington have exploited the sorrow, anger and fear created by the terrorist attacks of 9-11 to increase their own power. The executive branch in particular has claimed and exercised powers that would have been unthinkable even a decade ago. The President now claims the power to take anyone, anywhere in the world, including U.S. citizens, into custody without charges and hold them indefinitely without trial. At least one U.S. citizen, arrested on U.S. soil, unarmed and without the immediate means of committing any crime, was held in a military prison for over three years without charges. That citizen, Jose Padilla, was later transferred to the custody of a civilian court on unrelated charges, but the Government had never withdrawn its claim that any citizen can be subjected to the same treatment at the discretion of the President or his designee without recourse to the protection of the law. This government has claimed the right and exercised the power to use torture and evidence obtained by torture, to conduct secret trials, to maintain secret prisons to which people can be "disappeared" , to violate or redefine the Geneva Conventions regarding prisoners of war, and to spy upon and lie to the American people regarding its many illegal activities. |
|
| Why Vote For Me: |
| I knew I could no longer wait to make my challenge known because I have watched the recent actions of Mark Pryor. I have seen him turn a deaf ear to the people of Arkansas who cry out for him to help bring our troops home and to keep them safe from being put in harm’s way for false or ill-conceived reasons. I have seen him turn his back on the American principles of liberty, justice and limited government by voting for the Military Commissions Act. This un-American piece of legislation promotes torture and suspends the Writ of Habeas Corpus without the presence of a rebellion or invasion so blatantly violating the plain language of the Constitution that, in order to justify his vote, Mr. Pryor has joined the likes of Alberto Gonzales in arguing that the scope of our great Constitution is much narrower than the broad, clear language in which it is written, that there are people and places within our nation or under its control to which the protections of the Constitution do not apply but over which the President exercises inherent power not granted or limited by the People or by Congress.
After witnessing these repeated and ongoing attacks on the fundamental basis of our American way of life, I felt it was time to let Mark Pryor know that his actions have consequences. I felt that it was time to give the people of Arkansas an opportunity to show their support for a candidate dedicated to maintaining a free America ruled justly, by the law, not arbitrarily by men. |
I am running as a Green for US Senate.