Tommy Thompson
Wisconsin Senate Republican candidate and health care profiteer Tommy Thompson is getting desperate. He has launched a new television ad attacking his bold progressive opponent Tammy Baldwin as unpatriotic because she voted against a resolution commemorating the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2006.
But in criticizing Baldwin, Thompson is obscuring an important fact about the resolution Baldwin voted against. The resolution didn’t just honor 9/11’s victims and commemorate the attacks, it was heavily politicized and included support for Republican legislation that harmed civil liberties. Here’s a portion of the resolution that Republicans inserted and that had nothing to do with honoring 9/11’s victims:
Whereas Congress passed, and the President signed, numerous laws to assist victims, combat the forces of terrorism, protect the Homeland and support the members of the Armed Forces who defend American interests at home and abroad, including the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001 and its 2006 reauthorization, the Homeland Security Act of 2002, the Enhanced Border Security and Visa Entry Reform Act of 2002, the Maritime Transportation Security Act of 2002, and the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004;
As you can see, the resolution included support for the highly controversial USA PATRIOT Act, which many people across the political spectrum view as an attack on American civil liberties. It also included support for various immigration bills that were hotly-debated at the time.
The insertion of this section into the bill had nothing to do with remembering those America lost on 9/11. They simply served to politicize the legislation and make it supportive of Republican priorities.
Furthermore, Baldwin has voted repeatedly for bills that honored 9/11’s victims. For example, last year she voted to “award three Congressional Gold Medals in honor of the victims killed in three locations: the World Trade Center in New York City, the Pentagon in Virginia, and a Pennsylvania farm.”
Thompson’s ad is so misleading that even the right-leaning Factcheck.org labeled it “false and vicious.” But Baldwin isn’t backing down in the face of Baldwin’s smear. She launched her own ad pointing out that Thompson actually profited off of 9/11 when he got a government contract to care for 9/11 first responders — many of hwom never received their care.
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