‘Sarah Palin With a Harvard Degree’: Why New Senator Tom Cotton Is So Frightening
But then Cotton’s original claim to fame was a letter he sent to the New York Times back in 2006 when he was still serving in Iraq. The paper declined to publish the letter but he sent it on to the conservative blog Powerline, which published it and it traveled quickly through the conservative blogosphere, making Cotton one of the first homegrown, right-wing Internet heroes. He was very angry at the paper for reporting a story about terrorist financing schemes. In his trademark smug, smart-ass style, he concluded the letter with this:
And, by the way, having graduated from Harvard Law and practiced with a federal appellate judge and two Washington law firms before becoming an infantry officer, I am well-versed in the espionage laws relevant to this story and others—laws you have plainly violated. I hope that my colleagues at the Department of Justice match the courage of my soldiers here and prosecute you and your newspaper to the fullest extent of the law. By the time we return home, maybe you will be in your rightful place: not at the Pulitzer announcements, but behind bars.
I’m going to take a wild guess and assume he’s not going to be one of those Republican civil libertarians forming a kumbaya circle with Rand Paul. In fact, not one of the new GOP senators is likely to fall into that category.
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