I apologize for posting this so late. As a few of you know I tried to contact State Senator David Boswell fro Owensboro Kentucky regarding his race for the Second congressional seat from KY. A few months ago I succeeded in getting into contact with Mr. Boswell and discuss a few issues very important to me. First let me profusely apologize for not immediately posting this information. Law school coupled with other endeavors (NDLSC, etc.) caused me to place it on the back burner.
I can tell you this much, I think very highly of this man right now. Anyone that is a candidate for congress that is willing to speak with me just hits a high level of respect in my mind. I emailed Mr. Boswell and he emailed me back asking to speak by phone. After many weeks of phone tag he called me and we spoke for about roughly an hour. Admittedly I am knew to all of this and was simple giddy to get a call back, I mention this because I probably didn't do as good a job as I could. And since it has been a long time I don't remember as much as I wish.
I began by asking him his position on Telecommunications Amnesty. He was a bit confused, in part because he had not hear it referred to as such. He believes that the government should not be spying on it's own citizens without a warrant and that if they were involved in that, that they should not be receiving amnesty. He spoke of the importance of strong and constitutional law and going back to that from the last 8 years. He did say he supported maintaining the FISA court as a necessary tool for the executive branch to obtain warrants, but not without the judges.
I think at this point I wanted to do a back flip.
I then asked him about the Internet Neutrality movement and what he thought about it. This is where my memory is fuzzy. I think I might email him again to get him to clarify it for me again. I am seriously kicking myself on this one. What I think I remember is that he did not believe that people should be receiving different services when paying the same price. That it was a issue of law.
The final topic, and get this he wanted to keep talking and asked me for more questions but I was to stunned to come up with anything, was Iraq. Now he is obviously a moderate Democrat. Be he put it in very simple terms. He wants the withdrawal as soon as is feasible without casualties to American soldiers. He said we need to make sure we fund them and support them and get them out as soon as possible. He wasn't calling for a withdrawal tomorrow but an intelligent withdrawal that didn't risk American lives.
Is David Boswell my hero? No, I am probably much more progressive than Mr Boswell. But I know for certain he is the best candidate running. He is measured and seems to try and represent his district. His big issue is education and I believe he has done a great job in his work for education initiatives.
The second thing I want to tell you about is my meeting with Congressman Yarmuth of Louisville the other day. I went to school with someone with the KDP who is organizing picnics in every district in the city for Yarmuth to meet people at. I decided to pop into the first of them and it had a stunning turn out.
Towards the end of the event I went to introduce myself to Yarmuth and see if I could pick his brain. I didn't want to be presumptuous because I'm not even a constituent. He began talking to myself, another fellow, and the attorney hosting the event. He was honestly interested in my experiences as a law student and as a young activist. He made light of his “article 1” button campaign describing it as a silly reaction to how the congress couldn't get anything past the president. When the attorney asked Congressman Yarmuth what the button campaign was, this being the first she had heard of it, Marty Meyers, one of Yarmuth's LAs, promptly pulled out a pocket constitution and handed to her. We all cracked up a bit at this. They described the button campaign as just a simple way to get Americans to become interested in their own constitution and learn it.
Hon. Yarmuth also delved into a little bit of whats going on in the background. He said that if it hadn't been for “Nancy” and the rest of the leadership of the party we would be scattered. He mentioned that he thought the senate was going to pass a FISA bill minus the amnesty, and saying so mentioned how opposed he was to the amnesty and how much work the leadership had put in to try and get everyone in line on that vote.
I know we activists think it is just us calling our congresspersons that motivate them to flip their vote. But kudos for the leadership for their work on this.
I am attaching Mr. Boswell's website. Please consider contributing to his campaigning. I think I will email him again and try to get to better know him. We really need this seat. I have included a link to Yarmuth's ACTBLUE page also.
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