[Peace] News-Gazette Letter to the Editor | Duckworth breaks oath with vote

[Karen Aram]

Robert, the author is a friend, I have cc’d her on this email communication. She just today received a response to her letter from Tammy, please see:

"​The concerns regarding freedom of speech implications are rightly being litigated before Federal courts and would be subject to further debate and amendment in the House of Representatives, if that chamber even takes up the bill. This bill does not protect a state or local BDS law from being challenged in court by an individual on constitutional grounds.


On Feb 7, 2019, at 16:31, Robert Naiman via Peace <peace at lists.chambana.net<mailto:peace at lists.chambana.net>> wrote:

http://www.news-gazette.com/opinion/letters-the-editor/2019-02-05/letter-the-editor-duckworth-breaks-oath-with-vote.html

Letter to the Editor | Duckworth breaks oath with vote
Tue, 02/05/2019 - 4:15am | The News-Gazette<http://www.news-gazette.com/users/digitalmedia>

U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth's vote for S.1, the "Strengthening America's Security in the Middle East Act," is a Constitutional disgrace.

This legislation will encourage state and local governments to restrict Americans' right to free speech, a right that all members of Congress take an oath to protect.

The time-honored sanction of boycotts was used in Montgomery, Ala., South Africa and currently in Iran, Cuba, Russia, Venezuela, Syria and many places around the globe — purportedly to pressure governments to become more democratic and more humane, at least that's what successive administrations and Congresses have told Americans.

Whether this is what our government should be doing (or actually is doing) is left for other debates.

This letter asks: Why has Duckworth hypocritically voted to restrict Americans' right to use boycotts to fight Palestinian oppression, the same boycotts the U.S. uses across the globe?

Duckworth's support of S.1 demonstrates her contempt for democratic freedoms. It violates her oath to uphold the Constitution.

How can Duckworth vote against the very freedoms at home that she presumably fought for in Iraq?

Emma Lazarus, whose sonnet "The New Colossus" is engraved on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty, also wrote: "Until we are all free, we are none of us free." Duckworth's vote is insensible to understanding freedom, or she just doesn't care about some people, which amounts to racism.

She allows liberal use of sanctions everywhere but Palestine. This makes her motives and actions suspect.

SHERI DALEY

Champaign

===

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Robert Reuel Naiman
Policy Director
Just Foreign Policy
www.justforeignpolicy.org<http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/>
naiman at justforeignpolicy.org<mailto:naiman at justforeignpolicy.org>
(202) 448-2898 x1



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