When you're looking for a needle in a haystack ...

[lollardfish]

I met Coleen Rowley tonight at a small function in Northfield (mostly for St. Olaf people). Rowley was the FBI agent/legal advisor who wrote a memo on Moussaoui discussing the governmental failures that kept higher ups from being aware of the 9/11 plot. Among the most telling features, an agent said to her, in August, that "this is a guy who would fly a plane into the World Trade Center." Washington ignored it. She was featured on the cover of Time Magazine, and now is running for congress in Minnesota's second district. You can learn more about her campaign at:

Coleen Rowley for U.S. Congress..

She was very compelling in person. Her best line was about the NSA wiretapping and the massive collection of data. She says that "when you are looking for a needle in a haystack, the last thing you need to do is add more hay." She believes in the power of our criminal justice system, does not believe in most of the Patriot Act (barring a few streamlining features), and certainly not ignoring the FISA court.

She told a good joke about Bush. She linked oil, health care, jobs, immigration, and other issues to national security. And otherwise was very interesting to meet.

Now she was talking to a group of academics, so we're a tough audience. And she didn't need to sell us, but she did need to fire us up. She's not really a great speaker to a group, although she is in a small group. She not a career politician, and that's great. She can beat Klein, who is radically conservative, by convincing titular, educated, swing voters in Lakeville and Burnsville to vote for her. But she needs to work on her pitch.

Every sentence needs to begin, "Well, when I was in the FBI ..."
She needs to link Klein to the culture of corruption, to say frequently and clearly that Klein took $30,000 from Delay's PAC, and so is part of the whole Ney-Abramoff-Delay corrupt system and needs to go.

It'll be interesting to watch.

Comments

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

I wonder who her speech writer is.

K. [probably it's her]

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

I use that "needle in a haystack" line, too.

B

[bchbum-98.livejournal.com]

She has my vote - hands down. I've never liked Kline, even a little bit. I was at a local parade in 2002, proudly wearing a Luther sticker when Kline came up to me and tried to talk me into voting for him. I told him that there was no contest since I have kids in public school. He shrugged and walked away.