Abortion

I am Pro-Life and have and will lead on this important moral issue. Our founding documents guarantee the God-given right to life, from conception until natural death. I have always been committed to restoring America’s respect for the personhood of the unborn child.

I support passage of a constitutional amendment to protect the right to life. I believe that Roe v. Wade should be over-turned. My convictions regarding the sanctity of life have always been clear and consistent and my voting record is flawlessly pro-life.

Senator Rockefeller has a miserable record of consistently supporting abortion and funding of abortion through all 9 months of a pregnancy. He is the only representative from West Virginia that supports the horrific procedure termed partial-birth abortion. If you are not aware of this procedure, simply Google search partial-birth abortion for more details.

Agriculture

I call for an immediate and permanent end to the ‘death tax’ that has forced so many families to sell off farms and businesses that have taken lifetimes or even generations to build.

Having a stable and safe domestic food supply is necessary for national security. Likewise, all the goods and services produced or offered domestically lessens our dangerous dependence on foreign sources.  Freedom from onerous environmental regulations will also help strengthen our economy.

Education

I support educational choice for public, private and home schools and in local control of our schools by parents and taxpayers. Teachers should be rewarded for their dedication to training America’s future and I support performance-based pay and other initiatives that encourage our best teachers to continue teaching. 

I support the abolishment of the unconstitutional Department of Education and return its functions to the states. According to the National Taxpayers Union, this would save the U.S Government $68 billion in the first year alone. Education is best administered and controlled at the local level. 

Energy

In order to reduce payments to countries using money in contradiction to our national interests, in order to increase supply so as to reduce domestic prices, in order to provide additional employment opportunities, the following steps need to be taken.

Environment

I support government policy that ensures clean air, safe water, sustainable land use, and ample green space through the faithful care and management of our natural treasures.

Fair Tax

I support the concept known as the Fair Tax which abolishes all federal income, corporate, estate and gift, self-employment, capital gains, payroll, alternative minimum and payroll withholding taxes. The Fair Tax would replace those taxes with a progressive national retail sales tax. Having studied this model for the last 6 years, I believe this concept would jump-start our economy, make our products more competitive globally, bring back lost industries and jobs outsourced offshore and recapture billions of lost dollars from criminals and illegal aliens.

Guns

I support the individual’s Second Amendment rights to defend our families, our communities, our nation, our property and ourselves. The National Rifle Association and the Gun Owners of America have both given me an “A” rating in the past, which I intend to maintain.

The Second Amendment, written in 1789 and ratified in the Bill of Rights to the Constitution states:

“A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”

I believe that the right to keep and bear arms is an individual right just like the freedom of speech or religion.

Though Jay Rockefeller may say that he supports the 2nd amendment, his voting record does not verify his contention. Jay Rockefeller has voted numerous times to restrict law-abiding citizens’ freedoms to keep and bear arms. That is why he has earned a grade of “F” from both the Gun Owners of America and the National Rifle Association.

Gun opponents assert that the right to keep and bear arms is vested only in collective bodies like the military, police and National Guard. Here are just a few quotes from publications asserting this collectivist rights position:

“There is no individual right to bear arms in the Bill of Rights.” – USA Today, Richard Benedetto, December 28, 1994.

“The sale, manufacture and possession of handguns ought to be banned…. We do not believe the Second Amendment guarantees an individual right to keep them.” - The Washington Post, November 5, 1999.

“The individual’s right to keep and bear arms applies only to the preservation or efficiency of a ‘well-regulated militia’. Except for lawful police and military purposes, the possession of weapons by individuals is not constitutionally protected.” – American Civil Liberties Union (The ACLU), policy statement number 47, 1996.

However, we must consider the writings of our Founding Fathers who promoted the ratification of the Second Amendment. These men confirmed in our Bill of Rights that every citizen has a right to life, liberty, property and the natural right to use force to preserve those rights. Here is what some of our Founding Fathers had to say about the right to keep and bear arms:

“Resistance to sudden violence for the preservation not only of my person, my limbs, and my life, but of my property, is an indisputable right of nature which I never surrendered to the public by the compact of society and which, perhaps, I could not surrender if I would….The maxims of the law and the precepts of Christianity are precisely coincident in relation to this subject.” - John Adams, U.S. President and one of the two signers of the Bill of Rights.

“Among the natural rights of the Colonists are these: first, a right to life; secondly, to liberty; thirdly, to property – together with the right to support and defend them in the best manner they can.” – Samuel Adams, signer of the Declaration and “Father of the American Revolution”.

“The said Constitution [should] be never construed…to prevent the people of the United States, who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms.” – Samuel Adams

“And what country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms.” – Thomas Jefferson, U.S. President and signer of the Declaration.

“The advantage of being armed is an advantage which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation…. In the several kingdoms of Europe… the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.” – James Madison, U.S. President, signer of the Constitution, a framer of the Second Amendment in the First Congress.

“A people who mean to continue free must be prepared to meet danger in person, not to rely upon the fallacious protection of …armies.” - Edmund Randolph, Delegate to the Constitutional Convention and Secretary of State under President George Washington.

“A free people ought …to be armed.” George Washington, U.S. President, signer of the Constitution.

“No man should scruple of hesitate a moment to use arms in defense.” George Washington.

It is obvious from reading these statements that the framers of our Constitution and Bill of Rights intended to give individuals the right to defend themselves from others or a tyrannical government. This Divine right of individual citizens to use force of arms may be necessary to preserve the other inalienable rights given to them by God and protected by the Constitution.

I agree with George Washington when he said, “A free people ought… to be armed.”

I will oppose any further gun control legislation, so called assault weapon bans or efforts to impose frivolous lawsuits on gun manufacturers.

Healthcare

The headlines proclaim that healthcare will consume vast quantities of our wealth in very short time. How will we pay for it? Successful economies have prices set by the law of supply and demand, not by artificial government controls. Market price sensitivity is essential to efficient use of resources. When we look at the healthcare industry, we find ever-increasing government participation and government price controls. For various reasons, we also find a generation of people who have spent their whole life with someone else being responsible for their healthcare expenses, so there has been no price sensitivity for healthcare spending.

What to do? The only answer is to empower people with the ownership of their health. The way to do this is to encourage people to purchase health insurance that pays catastrophic health expenses only and puts the first dollar responsibilities in the hands of people who are the end users of the product. This would create the market forces to drive down the cost of medicine, and give people the vested interest in controlling their healthcare expenses and thereby growing their wealth and improving their health. This can be accomplished with the purchase of high deductible health insurance and obtaining a Health Savings Account.

Immigration

I believe that America must regain physical control of its borders and institute an immigration policy that doesn’t reward illegal behavior. A nation without effective borders cannot and will not be militarily or economically secure.

Iraq War

My strategy for fighting terrorists in Iraq is, as Ronald Reagan would say, we win and they lose.

Israel

I believe in Israel’s divine right to existence as a nation and our obligation to protect and defend her as a strategic ally in the Middle East.

Judges

I will vote to confirm strict constructionist jurists to the courts. I believe that activist judges are damaging America and its institutions by legislating their liberal agenda from the bench.

Marriage

I am a defender of the family as our most fundamental institution, and therefore am opposed to gay ‘marriage’ and ‘civil unions,’ and in support of the Federal Marriage Amendment.

Medical Malpractice

Some legislators never get the message or choose to deny it because the facts do not fit their agenda. In 1992-93 Senator Rockefeller immediately got on the Hillary-Care band wagon and vowed to give us a single-payer healthcare plan whether we wanted it or not. Funny that he has now abandoned Senator Clinton in favor of Barrack Obama.

West Virginians prefer to have a choice in choosing both their doctors and their health care insurers. Senator Rockefeller has repeatedly declined supporting needed tort reform in Congress saying that there is no evidence that it leads to lower malpractice premiums for physicians. He says this repeatedly in spite of the fact that WV doctors have seen their premiums decrease by 25-40% since our far-reaching medical tort reforms of 2003. We have seen an influx of physicians to our state, rather than watching our three medical school graduates leave for more favorable medicolegal environments.

National Security

For more than 25 years, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) had carefully cultivated a nonpartisan tradition of trust among its members. This committee, made up of a balance of Democrats and Republicans, deals with unique and privileged information that is crucial to our national security. In November of 2003, under the Democratic leadership of West Virginia Senator Jay Rockefeller, that trust was violated for the first time in the committee’s existence.

In his book, Deliver Us From Evil, Sean Hannity reveals the following about the incident, “On Tuesday, November 4, 2003, I obtained a copy of a memorandum apparently written by a Democrat staff member of the SSCI, describing the Democrats’ plans to use the committee’s ongoing review of intelligence activities for their own political purposes.” Hannity further concluded who the memorandum’s anonymous author was, “Now we know that Rockefeller himself was the instigator, and he has refused to repudiate its contents”.

Why would Senator Rockefeller allow the violation of this trust that former Democratic Senator Zell Miller referred to as “the first cousin of treason?” I believe Senator Rockefeller is more interested in seeing his party win the White House than his country win the war on terrorism.
This is political posturing not becoming of a U.S. Senator and behavior unworthy of re-election.

Religious Freedom

I believe that religious freedom is a fundamental human right. America should be steadfast and sure in supporting the rights of individuals to express their religious beliefs in every corner of the world. I am a proponent of the Judeo-Christian heritage that makes our nation great.

Stem Cell Research

I support stem cell research, but not on embryonic stem cells that results in the extinguishing of a life created at conception.

Taxes

Until we can get the Fair Tax passed, I support making the Bush tax cuts permanent.

I support lowering of capital gains and dividend income tax rates to promote reinvestment which further expands our economy.

United Nations

I will always work to maintain our national sovereignty and oppose those who would hand our independence and power over to unelected international bureaucrats.

I oppose United States participation in a World Court.

Veterans

Veterans deserve our respect and one way that I will honor their service to our country is through well funded benefits on which they rely. The second way that I will honor their service is to defend our constitutional liberties for which they fought on the battle fields which I will defend on the floor of the U.S. Senate.