Can you identify this United States Senator?

will provide details downthread after we get some responses

On edit

Here is a letter from Norm's room mate why doesn't he come clean about smoking pot when he was younger.



http://www.pensitoreview.com/2008/07/24/franken-attacked-by-republican-hypocrite-opponent-%e2%80%94-and-its-bad/

The funny thing is, until 1996, Norm Coleman was a Democrat. When he was 20, Coleman celebrated his birthday at Woodstock. His college roommate, lawyer Norman Kent, recently took Coleman to task for hypocrisy on his past pot-smoking after Coleman toed the Republican line about the war on drugs.

My friend Norman,

Coleman during a Vietnam War protestYears ago, in a lifetime far away, you did not oppose the legalization of marijuana…

Sure, we had to tape the doors shut, burn incense and open the windows…yet we grew up okay, without the help of the Office of National Drug Control Policy’s advice.

We grew up to become lawyers. Our other friends, as you go down the list, are doctors, professors, parents, political consultants and professionals. No one ever got cancer from smoking pot or diabetes from using a joint.

You never said then that pot was dangerous. What was scary then, and is as frightening now, is when national leaders become voices of hypocrisy, harbingers of the status quo, and protect their own position instead of the public good…

How about standing up and saying: “I, Norm Coleman, smoked pot in 1969.” That “I am not a gang member, a drug addict or a criminal.” How about saying: “I was able to responsibly integrate my prior pot use into my life, and still succeed on my own merits.”

How about standing up not only for who you are, but who you were?

Norm Kent

polite veteran. His hair then looks long now, but compared to this - his was Beatles circa 1964.

He was quite the liberal back then.



:eyes:

yes that was the old pot smoking Norm Coleman who how hypocritically uses Franken's past against him while pretending he was in a Church choir.

n/t

Wrong chamber.

nt

Interesting. I don't think it's Debbie Stabenow.

Tasteless. I admit it.

She's had a lot of work done.

That's somehow sad. Good-looking guy, nice face and politically engaged. What happened to him?
Tragic how one just gives up the things one believed in for many years, maybe decades just for political ambitions. It seems he became the kind of politician that he opposed in his youth.

once they took that away people sold out.


time to bring the draft back.

that is the shortest yet most insightful analysis of what happened to the political activity of the 60s and 70s i have ever seen

you are way right
i never thought about it before but now i will have to ruminate on it

it has taken until now (with a war on and the draft resurfacing from time to time as an issue)for the youth vote to be relevant

thanks grantcart
wowsers

Keep in mind that my only child is an eight-year-old boy, whom I would never want to see go off to war. The problem with our "volunteer" army is that it gives neocons a very convenient excuse to begin wars. We have the manpower standing by at the ready, after all, so why not use it? And if soldiers die, the neocons can make light of it, saying, "They volunteered. They knew what they were getting into."

Despite the fact that I don't want to see my son drafted, I would much rather have him be drafted to fight a necessary war (for example, we have been attacked and all other avenues of diplomacy have been exhausted) than have a particular class of Americans fight unnecessary wars to prop up our economy.

The people who fought in World War II were regarded as heroes. They were Americans who represented all walks of life, and because of that, the war hit home for everyone.
Today that is not true. Soldiers are drawn disproportionately from the lower classes, and this causes war to be an abstraction for many. People can slap their yellow ribbon magnet to the back of their car and call themselves supporters. Or as our moron in chief suggested, we can buy stuff to show our patriotism. That's a far cry from the involvement of a family whose child has involuntarily been called into service.

In the sixties, of course, people were also faced with their children and relatives being called off to war. And, quite reasonably, these families considered carefully whether the war they were being called to was a just war. What would this Iraq war have been like if ALL American families had stood a likelihood of losing a loved one? Would we even be fighting it?

Somehow, I think not.

edited for spelling

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norm_Coleman

Norman Bertram "Norm" Coleman, Jr. (born August 17, 1949) has served as a U.S. Senator from Minnesota since 2003, serving in the 108th, 109th, and 110th congresses. He served as the mayor of Saint Paul, Minnesota from 1994 to 2002. Previously a member of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (DFL), Coleman switched to the Republican Party of Minnesota in 1996. In 1998 he lost a bid for Governor of Minnesota against former professional wrestler Jesse Ventura, a member of the Reform Party of Minnesota, and DFL candidate Hubert H. "Skip" Humphrey III.

it:smoke: Who woulda thought norm coleman was a hypocrit:wow:

Thanks, Norm Kent..we need more exposing of hypocrites.

who is now a very successful evangelical christian with his own church. From those who know him, he's still an asshole.

Makes me sick.

Coleman's politics have changed dramatically throughout his political career. In college, Coleman was a liberal Democrat and was actively involved in the anti-war movement of the early 1970s. He ran for student senate and opined in the school newspaper that his fellow students should vote for him because he knew that "these conservative kids don't fuck or get high like we do (purity, you know)... Already the cries of motherhood, apple pie, and Jim Buckley reverberate through the halls of the Student Center. Everyone watch out, the 1950s bobby-sox generation is about to take over."<5>

He was once suspended from Hofstra University on New York's Long Island for participating in a sit-in protest against student exclusion from the University faculty club.

When first elected as mayor of St. Paul in 1993, Coleman was a member of the DFL and considered left-of-center politically; but he gradually shifted to much more conservative positions on many issues during his tenure.

While running for mayor in 1993, Coleman wrote in a letter to the City Convention Delegates: "I have never sought any other political office. I have no other ambition other than to be mayor." He goes on in the same letter to say:

I am a lifelong Democrat. Some accuse me of being the fiscal conservative in this race — I plead guilty! I'm not afraid to be tight with your tax dollars.

Yet, my fiscal conservatism does not mean I am any less progressive in my Democratic ideals. From Bobby Kennedy to George McGovern to Warren Spannaus to Hubert Humphrey to Walter Mondale — my commitment to the great values of our party has remained solid.
...

Ironically, prior to becoming a Republican and running against him in 2002, Coleman chaired Wellstone's Senate re-election campaign in 1996. While making the Wellstone nomination speech at the 1996 state DFL convention, Coleman stated: "Paul Wellstone is a Democrat, and I am a Democrat." At this point in time, tensions were so high between Coleman and the DFL party that a number of delegates at the convention were loudly booing Coleman's speech.<12>

(That I didn't know!)

graduated from the same high school.

Bernie Sanders, Chuck Schumer, and Norm Coleman.

How did one turn out so right, and the other two, so wrong?

How many hippies ended up becoming yuppies in the eighties? That entire generation is a giant dissapointment. My apologies to the few good ones from that generation.