Specter holds town meeting in Wayne County

By TOM KANE

HONESDALE, PA - About 200 people waited for an hour for the appearance of Senator Arlen Specter at the main court room of the Wayne County Courthouse on August 8.

The announcement for the session said he wished to meet with voters “to identify and discuss the most pressing issues facing our state and nation.”

After sharing the state of his health with the crowd (the senator had received chemotherapy about a year ago and is doing well), he launched into a rapid but competent question-and-answer session, which lasted another hour and a half. The senator, who is the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, has been knee deep in the recent controversy between the executive and the legislative branches of government, highlighting his position over the questioning of Attorney General Gonzalez regarding the dismissal of a number of U. S. attorney generals across the nation.

“The Attorney General Gonzalez has been very arrogant in refusing to answer the committee’s questions,” Specter said.

At one point, he admitted that he was wrong when he voted for the appointment of Gonzalez at his confirmation hearing.

Specter was candid in a number of other issues that people brought up. He is waiting for the generals to report on the “surge” of American troops in Iraq and will make a clear decision whether to support the war or not after their report, he said.

The question of immigration came up and he took the position of accepting that some immigrants should be allowed to be guest workers. “We should revise the notion of fugitive status that we put on many immigrants,” he said.

The senator showed his Republican side when he warned that we might be moving toward socialized medicine in the issue of universal health care. “We don’t want to put the government between the doctor and the patient,” he said.

During the hour, he ranged over a wide and varied list of state, national and international issues, like energy legislation, Medicare, securing the country’s borders, the new farm bill (Specter is a supporter of dairy farmers), allowing importation of drugs from Canada, repair of bridges, not making abortion a litmus test in appointing Supreme Court justices, nuclear power as a possibility for power generation and the preservation of open space. He showed that he has an impressive command of the issues.