Stand up to George Bush: Elect a Republican to Congress!

What in the world could bring me, a self-identified libertarian Democrat, to the point of advocating electing a Republican to Congress?

Two things.

First, a Republican like North Carolina's BJ Lawson.

For those who don't know Lawson already, he is arguably one of the most dynamic and exciting libertarian Republican candidates this year. With Jim Forsythe out of the race in New Hampshire, the list of Republican congressional candidates representing a new generation of libertarian politics is lead by BJ Lawson and Virginia's Amit Singh.

Second, there needs to be a Democratic incumbent who is failing to stand up for the district he is elected to represent. In North Carolina's 4th District, we have such a problem.

Ironically, a front page story at the liberal blog Daily Kos helps make the case.

The great minds in Bush's Homeland Security department came up with a doozie this year: let's move the facility where we study the most infectious and dangerous disease among livestock from the isolated island it's now on (accessible only by ferry or helicopter) and put it where there are lots of livestock operations. Brilliant!

The Associated Press has the details on a plan to move the nation's leading center for research into animal diseases from Plum Island to the heartland of America:

The only U.S. facility allowed to research the highly contagious foot-and-mouth disease experienced several accidents with the feared virus, the Bush administration acknowledged Friday.

A 1978 release of the virus into cattle holding pens on Plum Island, N.Y., triggered new safety procedures. While that incident was previously known, the Homeland Security Department told a House committee there were other accidents inside the government's laboratory.

The accidents are significant because the administration is likely to move foot-and-mouth research from the remote island to one of five sites on the U.S. mainland near livestock herds. This has raised concerns about the risks of a catastrophic outbreak of the disease, which does not sicken humans but can devastate the livestock industry.

One of the five likely sites of the research facility is the town of Butner in Granville County, just outside of the 4th District and the Durham metropolitan area.

Here is where the incumbent in the race stands:

My current assessment is that the Granville County site would be a good location for the NBAF, and that our region of North Carolina would reap many economic and agricultural benefits from such a facility.

Here is BJ Lawson's view:

As a citizen, physician, and father, I strongly oppose NBAF in our backyard. Join me in opposing David Price, and opposing NBAF. As your Congressman, I will work for the people of the Fourth District by seeking to make our federal government smaller, not larger. I will work to preserve private property rights, and not encourage unaccountable environmental hazards in our backyards.

The AP article outlines a government simulations of a simulated foot-and-mouth disease outbreak in Kansas:

A simulated outbreak of the disease in 2002 — part of an earlier U.S. government exercise called "Crimson Sky" — ended with fictional riots in the streets after the simulation's National Guardsmen were ordered to kill tens of millions of farm animals, so many that troops ran out of bullets. In the exercise, the government said it would have been forced to dig a ditch in Kansas 25 miles long to bury carcasses. In the simulation, protests broke out in some cities amid food shortages.

Stand up to George Bush and his Department of Homeland Security, elect Republican BJ Lawson.