Taking Pombo's Hair
This is a follow-up to CA-11. Read that, then this. What's changed since then is the Abramoff-Pombo link. From the College of the Atlantic press release archive.
Former Congressman Paul Norton McCloskey Jr., more familiarly known as Pete McCloskey, will be spending from Oct. 16 through the 22 at College of the Atlantic as part of the school's Wiggins Lecture Series in Government and Polity in honor of James Russell Wiggins.
While the environmentalist legislator will be occupied much of the week in speaking with students individually and in classes, on Thursday, Oct. 20 at 4 p.m., he will be giving a public talk at the college's Gates Center provisionally titled, "Youth and Politics: Setting the Political Agenda," on the ways in which youth can make a difference in politics. He will be talking about, he says, "today's political challenges and the need for student involvement." McCloskey will also be speaking of specific cases, among them, "Earth Day and ending the Vietnam War, in which student involvement changed national policy."
McCloskey was an early environmentalist, co-chair of the first Earth Day in 1970. He coauthored several pieces of environmental legislation, among them the Endangered Species, Marine Mammal, Coastal Zone and Estuarine protection acts. He also served as congressional advisor to the Law of the Sea Conference and the International Whaling Commission.
Born in 1927, a fourth generation Californian, McCloskey was elected to the House of Representatives in l967 as the first Republican opposed to the Vietnam War, beating Shirley Temple Black. He served in the House until 1983. Continues McCloskey, "In the Congress I made the first speech suggesting impeachment of President Nixon for obstruction of justice in June 1973." A year later, that process ended in Nixon's impeachment. McCloskey had run against Nixon for the Republican nomination on an antiwar platform in 1972, but, he says, "I got only 20 percent of the Republican vote, although I did get one delegate from New Mexico."
McCloskey graduated from Stanford University School of Law in June l953, in the class behind Justice Sandra Day O'Connor and the late Chief Justice William Rehnquist. Continues McCloskey, "My moot court debate partner in the l950 finals had been John Ehrlichman."
COA environmental law professor Ken Cline is hosting McCloskey. Cline says he is most excited about the former congressman's record in environmental legislation. "He was present at the creation of the modern environmental movement," says Cline.
As a self-described "liberal Republican environmentalist and proponent of pro-choice, pro-rule of law, pro-separation of church and state and profound distruster of civilians who have dodged military service in their youth but are eager to send young men to war," McCloskey represents a broader view of the Republican party than most students have seen. Continues Cline, "When we talked, he described himself as an endangered species. I want students to see that there can be real diversity in the Republican party, and he's particularly interested in youth."
Shirley Temple Black ran for Congress in 1967 on a platform urging more American involvement in the war in Vietnam. After Pete beat her Nixon apointed her to the spot at the UN, in the heydey of Bircher isolationism, where she was both saner, and more photogenic, than John Bolton, who is every inch a Bircher.
The COA is one of Maine's two intellectual gems. The other being Unity.