Way back in June, we were in the middle of a pretty disheartening and frustrating legislative fight. In that awful, losing battle, we had an ally in a very unlikely place. Back then, I wrote about this Gary Trauner blog post, from his campaign Web site:
Is that what it’s come to? Our federal government says you must do something, even if it is against the law, and we "need" to do it? Well, I don’t care whether it’s the Republican Leadership in Washington or the Democrats in the House, I’ll proudly tell them – and you - where I stand on warrantless wiretapping, the rule of law and protecting our national security:
- I want to ensure that my children, and all of our children, are safe from terrorist attacks by beefing up our intelligence capabilities, protecting vulnerable targets, proactively taking out terrorists such as Al-Qaeda in their hideouts in Afghanistan, Pakistan and around the world, and working to remove safe havens for terrorists by winning the battle of ideas, not simply the battle for Tikrit.
- I believe in the Constitution and rule of law, the two things that define our great American experiment. We must not gut our freedoms in order to save our freedoms. If we do that, those who use terror as a tactic will achieve their goal – after all, what would we be fighting to protect?.
- We can protect our nation without sacrificing everything our founding fathers and millions of veterans fought for; the FISA law, already updated in 2001 after 9/11 and recently patched to fix some omissions due to changing technology, works.
- I would rather bring Osama Bin Laden to justice than help large corporations avoid justice.
- If we value our Constitutional rights such as the 2nd amendment right to bear arms, we better think twice about ignoring other Constitutional rights, such as the 4th Amendment right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure without a warrant and probable cause. Because once we cherry pick the Constitution, someone will eventually come after the rights we hold most dear.
That's the kind of western Dem leadership we have from Jon Tester. We could have Jon Tester matched in the House by Gary Trauner?
And how cool would it be to have the new Democratic member from Dick Cheney's old House seat working to undo all the damage to our Constitution Dick Cheney has done?
We're trying to get Gary up to $120,000 to help get his ads on across the state. Wyoming is so huge, and the population so diverse, that you've got to advertise in three of four states to cover the place. We're targeting the ads he has to place in Salt Lake City to reach the southwestern part of the state. When we started yesterday, our goal was $70,000. We're [insert info] closer to getting there.
Don't let up. Don't let Gary Trauner lose by 1 vote per precinct in 2008 like he did in 2006.
Leave everything on the road and turn this seat blue.
On the Web:
Gary Trauner for Congress
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