As Speaker of the House, and representative of California’s 8th Congressional District, you have failed to offer a satisfactory explanation for many of the political choices you have made. Even your most ardent supporters are at a loss to defend your escalation of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan after you became Speaker (despite your promises to end the war), and for your support for the Patriot Act, its subsequent reauthorization, and for your support for the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, among other things.
Senator Boxer’s vote was prescient because it was ultimately established that the Bush administration had intentionally built a case for war with Iraq without regard to factual evidence. No weapons of mass destruction were ever found in Iraq and Saddam Hussein had no links to al Qaeda.
Why do we have an annual budget crisis? Primarily because California is one of only three states – Arkansas and Rhode Island are the others – to require a supermajority to adopt a budget. Thus, each year at budget time, the Republican minority is able to exercise disproportionate control over the budget process because passing a budget requires a two-thirds vote in both houses.
But as is so often the case, common sense for the public’s interest is shoved aside by special interests who have a financial stake in the passage of Prop 23. That would be the oil companies who don’t want their product replaced with renewable energy. According to the Huffington Post, three out-of-state oil companies – Valero Corp. and Tesoro Corp of Texas and Flint Hills Resources in Kansas – are big contributors to Proposition 23.
If we were going to run two of the most viable progressive women in the whole city in the same district against each other it was important to me that something amazing came of it.
According to Iranian opposition activists, detainees were tortured and raped while imprisoned. Iranian officials denied the charges. Whether the charges are true or not, what right does the United States, who has acted wrongly, either morally or legally – that is, who has ‘unclean hands’ – to complain about the human rights abuses of Iran, or any other country?
As true patriots they have been willing, and morally well braced to endure, not only rank and file criticism, but also broad disdain, public ridicule, numerous slanders of every hue, and in some cases even physical violence. From my father’s point of view, without a thought for self, a true patriot stands up against the stones of condemnation, and speaks for those who are given no real voice in the halls of justice, or the halls of government.
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