To the Editor:
Shame on Democratic Senators Kirsten Gillibrand, Charles Schumer, et. al., for their precipitate rush to judgment of Senator Al Franken. Their credibility in this matter is zero with me, a victim of prolonged criminal sexual abuse as a 14-year-old 55 years ago.
Their December 6 call for Senator Franken’s immediate resignation emulated the disrespect for the Senate’s regular order displayed by their Republican colleagues in ramming the recent tax bill through the Senate without a single public hearing.
Their actions definitely don’t inspire confidence in their political integrity or represent the interest of sexual abuse victims like me in seeing senators embark on a sober consideration of what may be required of them as legislators to address the fundamental forces which enable sexual abuse in our society.
That Senator Franken was successfully pressed to resign before any orderly ethics committee process was even scheduled, reveals an ominous bipartisan lack of commitment to the Senate’s own procedures for measured deliberation on such an important matter.
Senators in Al Franken’s political lynch mob should heed the warning John F. Kennedy spoke in his Inaugural Address (to the new nations emerging from colonial status): “to remember that, in the past, those who foolishly sought power by riding the back of the tiger ended up inside.”
John Breasted
Great Barrington
