Political Quotes

“Mr. President, back in 1987, a 23-year-old mill worker named George Alexander struck a tree spike--a tree spike like this one--in the log that he was processing. His sawblade shattered, and it caused a wound stretching from his eye all the way down to his chin. His teeth were smashed, and his jaw was brutally dashed in half. The incident made national news. Just 2 years later, Tracy Stone-Manning rented a typewriter to disguise her identity. She then typed and sent a letter to the U.S. Forest Service on behalf of an ecoterrorist group. She conspired to spike trees with spikes just like this one--hundreds and hundreds of pounds of spikes just like this one. In so doing, endangered the lives of foresters, of loggers, and of firefighters. She ended the letter with the following words: You bastards go in there anyway and a lot of people could get hurt. Unfortunately, it wasn't until after her nomination hearing that we learned of her work with the ecoterrorist organization EarthFirst!. It wasn't until after her hearing that we learned that she had been issued a target letter by a Federal grand jury and had hired an attorney to negotiate an immunity deal prior to testifying in the tree-spiking case. It wasn't until after her hearing that we read her words in a newspaper saying that she ``could have been charged with conspiracy were it not for her agreement with the U.S.…”