A Baseball-Player Senator With No Stuff On His Pitch
In Senate debate over extending the Patriot Act, Senator Jim Bunning, erstwhile Republican of Kentucky, offered this pathetic perspective in support of the antiterrorism measure:
"Civil liberties do not mean much when you are dead."
What a pansy statement, by a Hall of Fame pitcher. Going into the full stretch, Bunning was so far outside on that pitch, it should have been a passed ball. Seventy-four years old, I guess he’s lost the old pepper. Kentuckians must have caught their breath at that one.
Bunning might check his history to see what some older folks than he had to say about civil liberties, guys like Washington, Adams and Tom Jefferson. They were the landed gentry of their day, wealthy in the extreme with every special privilege available to them and they put it all on the line.
You ought to hang your head, Jim.
These men, who gave you the opportunity to serve in a United States Senate, risked being hauled off to England, stood at a public gallows and eviscerated before they were h…