material below as yet unedited from 2006 campaign.
I've mostly been active against our failed drug war, organizing such events as the Great Midwest Marijuana Harvest Festival and Weedstock, but hope to show I'm not a one-trick-pony. On the net since 1984, I've been interested in online free speech and Privacy since those debates began.
My first official act after being sworn in will be an amendment to the War Powers Act, so that any future Wars will be only by explicit, old fashioned Congressional Declaration of War. You can't win "wars" against abstractions, because abstractions are incapable of surrender.
Impeachment, under the Constitution, begins in the House of Representatives, but as a Senator I'd be ready and eager to try this Vice President, President, Defense Secretary, and on down the line.
I'm Pro-choice on everything.
I'm a 2nd Amendment Democrat. Advocacy of gun control has only served to drive rural voters into the hands of the Republicans. It's not just about hunting, these folks are unable to trust a Party which won't trust them on the choice of what firearms they should own. More fundamentally, the Bill of Rights is a seamless whole. When we pick and chose what freedoms to defend, we lose credibilty on the rest.
Go to my video to see a 4th Amendment stunt I pulled at the Albuquerque Amtrak station in 2001.
Unhappy with Herb Kohl's votes for the Iraq war, Patriot Act, etc, I began asking more "electable" Democrats to challenge him in the Democratic Primary. When I found they were all afraid to face his bottomless treasury, I concluded that if there was to be a challenge, I'd have to do it myself.
Biographical: I grew up in New Jersey, came to Wisconsin in 1971 to attend the UW, got indefinitely suspended at the end of my freshman year for the last round of Vietnam War protests. Heading to Miami to join the actions around Nixon's renomination Convention, I became the youngest person placed on the White House enemies list, a couple months shy of my 18th Birthday. When i went to register for the draft (back in New Jersey,) the County Police Chief, there on unrelated business, warned "Whatever you do, don't let this one near our boys, he's trouble." This led to my being classified 4F Administrative, translates to unfit for 'none of the above' reasons. As it turns out, my age cohort was the first not to face conscription.
My first run for office was in 1990, when I challenged Tommy Thompson in the Republican primary for Governor, mostly using the campaign to re-introduce hemp as a raw material for such industries as textiles, as a fuel source, and, especially of interest to Wisconsin, paper.
This led to a broader interest in renewables.I'd like to see our 1930s and 1940s era electric plants, currently mothballed as 3d string backups, retrofitted with biomass gassifiers , as an immediate step, rather than wait for cellulose to ethanol technologies to mature. In 1990 I heard these conversions were just over the horizon, and while the horizon may be shorter, we still hear they're just past it.
Cellphone tracking In the '90s, legislation was passed requiring cell phone companies to develop the ability to locate your phone in the event you dialed 911. The architecture they built to do this knows where you are, any time the phone's turned on, and the keep a 'Permanent Record" of everywhere you've been. Neither State nor Federal law places meningful limits on use of this location history record. Win or lose myrace, I'm trying to use it to push through legislation requiring search warrants for law enforcement tracking in realtime, and forceing the cell companies to delete location records as soon as they no longer need them to place your calls. Exceptions would be made only if you opt in to services letting others track your whereabouts.