"In mid-September (1997), as Congress was rushing toward adjournment, a closed-door meeting took place between six influential senators. Their intention was to sqaush a bad idea that oculd have had disastrous consequences for millions of American Indians.
Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, Ben Nighthorse Campbell, R-Colo., Ted Stevens, R-Alasak, and Slade Gorton, R-Wash., met in the ofices of Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M. to discuss a plan by Gorton that would have stripped tribes of one of their most basic rights.
It wasn't so much a meeting as a dressing-down.
Gorton had inserted a measure into a $13 billion appropriations bill tha would have forced tribes to give up their immunity to lawsuits--a keystone of the government's Indian policy that recognizes tribes as sovereign entities.
McCain, the pevious chairman of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee and a champion of Indian rights, would have none of it....."
Anderson and Moller go on to say "...Gorton is set to continue a crusade that he launched nearly 30 years ago as attorney general in his home state of Washington. Gorton has made it his mission to rewrite federal Indian policy...Indian officials believe Gorton's grudge goes back to the long-ago days as attorney general when he lost a fishing rights case before the U.S. Supreme Court..."
Gorton's personal grudge has been repeatedly carried to the level at which he can put the good faith, moral obligations, and legal responsibilities of the United States up for grabs in order to satisfy his personal agenda. Somehow, I think the United States is worth more than that. The question is: does the Republican Party think the integrity of the United States is worth more than Gorton's emotions?
Return to Charge! Gorton Sounds Buglecall of Racism and Hatred
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