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Jack Conway on Government Reform |
CONWAY: We need to put the people of Kentucky first. The special interests in Washington have enough people standing up for them. As attorney general, I have stood up for the people of Kentucky. I've taken on pharmaceutical companies when they have lied to our Medicaid program. I have taken on oil companies that have gouged us. There's a real clear choice between someone who has taken on the drug issue and someone who says that drugs aren't a pressing issue in Kentucky, someone who stands up to criminals and someone who says that nonviolent behavior shouldn't be a crime. I mean, that's a really clear choice.
Q: Attorney General Conway, you have even gone further than that. On the campaign trail you have called Dr. Paul "crazy." Your campaign ads call him "out of touch."
CONWAY: I'm not saying Dr. Paul is crazy. I think some of his ideas are out of the mainstream and they're out of touch with the values of normal Kentuckians.
Organizational Self-Description: U.S. Term Limits, the nation's oldest and largest term limits advocacy group, announced that 14 new signers of its congressional term limits amendment pledge have been elected to the 114th Congress. The group includes five new senators, eight new House members and one House incumbent who signed the pledge for the first time this cycle. The pledge calls for members to co-sponsor and vote for a constitutional amendment limiting House members to three terms (six years) and Senators to two terms (12 years). The USTL President said, "The American people are fed up with career politicians in Washington and strongly embracing term limits as a remedy. Gallup polling shows that 75% of Americans support term limits."
Opposing legal argument: [ACLU, Nov. 7, 2014]: In U.S. Term Limits v. Thornton (May 22, 1995), the Court ended the movement to enact term limits for Congress on a state-by-state basis. The Court held that the qualifications for Congress established in the Constitution itself could not be amended by the states without a constitutional amendment, and that the notion of congressional term limits violates the "fundamental principle of our representative democracy 'that the people should chose whom they please to govern them.'"
Opposing political argument: [Cato Institute Briefing Paper No. 14, Feb. 18, 1992]: Several considerations may explain political scientists' open hostility to term limitation:
