Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) will be visiting my work next week to speak and it's possible I might get a chance to ask him some questions. If I do get such a chance what questions/comments would be appropriate?
Background data on Leahy to help evaluate this opportunity:
- Leahy is the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and is a senior member of the Agriculture and Appropriations Committees. He ranks seventh in seniority in the Senate.
- Patrick Leahy was elected to the United States Senate in 1974 and remains the only Democrat elected to this office from Vermont. At 34, he was the youngest U.S. Senator ever to be elected from the Green Mountain State. Leahy was born in Montpelier and grew up across from the Statehouse. A graduate of Saint Michael's College in Colchester (1961), he received his Juris Doctor from Georgetown University Law Center (1964). He served for eight years as State's Attorney in Chittenden County. He gained a national reputation for his law enforcement activities and was selected (1974) as one of three outstanding prosecutors in the United States
- As a leading member of the Appropriations Committee, Leahy is the Chairman of the Committee’s Subcommittee on State and Foreign Operations and also sits on its Defense, Interior, Commerce-Justice-Science, Transportation-Treasury-Judiciary-Housing and Urban Development, and Homeland Security subcommittees.
- Active on human rights issues, Leahy also has been the leading U.S. officeholder in the international campaign against the production, export and use of anti-personnel landmines. In 1992 Leahy wrote the first law by any government to ban the export of these weapons. He led efforts in Congress to aid mine victims by creating a special fund in the foreign aid budget, and the Leahy War Victims Fund now provides up to $14 million of relief to these victims each year. He was instrumental in establishing programs to support humanitarian demining and played a key role in pushing for an international treaty banning anti-personnel mines. He also wrote and enacted civilian war victims relief programs that are underway in Afghanistan and Iraq.