Over at Crooked Timber Ted Barlow is trying to get people to persuade Connecticticut Republican Senator Chris Shays to become the first Republican Senator co-sponsor of Rep. Ed Markey's bill opposing Extraodinairy Rendition, H.R.952. This is the practice of shipping suspected terrorists--so weakly suspected we have no way of keeping them--to states that we know practice torture, outsourcing the dirty work to them. Not only is it morally wrong, it sets a dangerous tone for our troops to work in and makes efforts at public diplomacy rather useless. I.e. it makes for bad national security. If I'm not mistaken, my friend Colin McCormick helped write this bill when he was working for Markey last year. Writes Barlow:
I’m not an idiot. I know that this bill will never pass in this Congress. But I’d like to see at least one Republican co-sponsor for this bill.
I’m going to ask that readers politely contact Connecticut moderate Republican Christopher Shays, who might be open to persuasion.
His phone number in DC is 202-225-5541. In Bridgeport, CT, it’s 203-579-5870. He can be emailed from this page.
So if you live in Connecticut, or have another less extreme Republican representing you, I suggest you do the same. Barlow has a sample letter on his blog post. Ditto for Republican representatives. Intel-Dump has a couple of posts on the matter and keeps them all here. Getting a Republican Co-Sponsor would be really helpful. As people note in the comments, even these little apparently symbolic victories matter greatly in the bigger picture.
