Unfortunately, she’s not a candidate for office, having lost her primary election for a Congressional seat in New Hampshire. Oh, and another thing — she’s a Republican:
CONCORD – A federal judge on Wednesday denied a former Republican congressional candidate’s request for a restraining order barring President George Bush or Vice President Richard Cheney from bombing Iran or Syria.
Mary Maxwell, 59, of 179 Loudon Rd, Apt. 10, Concord, filed a lawsuit Monday against Bush, Cheney and other “unnamed defendants actively engaging in acts of war against Iran and Syria in the guise of the war against terrorism.”
Maxwell’s suit seeks a ruling that the administration lacks legal authority to preemptively attack either Iran or Syria without a Congressional declaration of war, and that radioactive fallout from the use of nuclear weapons in any such attack would endanger people around the world, including herself. […]
Maxwell argues that the Constitution gives Congress the exclusive authority to declare war. Thus, she argues, Congress must debate and approve or deny the administration’s reported plans for preemptive nuclear strikes against hostile nations alleged to be developing nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction.
“It’s so stunning for Congress to give away its prerogative, and it’s not allowed to do that,” Maxwell said Wednesday, reached by phone at her home. “My complaint as a citizen is that Congress only too willingly is saying, ‘Yeah, we don’t care if he bothers to ask us . . . He can do what he likes.'”
Mary Maxwell, my hat’s off to you …
… I doubt we’d agree on a lot things with respect to politics, but we agree on this issue. Your motion for temporary restraining order had a snowball’s chance in hell of succeeding (as I’m sure your attorney told you) but I love the fact that you went ahead with it anyway, if only to register your protest that no President has the right to unilaterally declare war, much les a pre-emptive war of aggression against a state that is not an imminient threat to our nation.
I suspect this nails shut the coffin on your political career with the Republican Party, but if you ever want to run as a Democrat, let me know. God knows, none of them have spoken out against Bush’s war plans for Iran, plans which have been common knowledge for many months now. They’ve all been too afraid that such opposition will make them look soft on the Global War on Terror. I think it would make them look like they have some guts for a change, don’t you?
