Political Wire: "Former Sen. Mike Gravel (D-AK) plans to announce Monday that he will seek the Democratic nomination for president in 2008, according to a press release. Gravel will be the first candidate to formally announce his candidacy in what looks to be a crowded presidential field."
Here's the view from the Drudge Report. They write, "Gravel served in the Senate from 1969 to 1981, during the turbulent last years of the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal. He is hoping voters respond to his anti-war stance, drawing on the parellels being made between Vientam and Iraq.
"Gravel is perhaps best known for staging a one-man filibuster leading to the end of the military draft as well as for reading the Pentagon Papers into the record at a hastily arranged Senate committee hearing at the end of June 1971. A day after he did so the U.S. Supreme Court lifted the Justice Department's prior restraint on the publication of the papers in the press.
"Gravel later lost a Supreme Court decision in spring 1972 to allow publishing the classified documents in book form by Beacon Press in Boston. The Nixon administration chose not to prosecute him or Beacon and publication went forward. The court had ruled that Gravel had immunity from prosecution only within the confines of the Senate chambers.
"The former senator said he decided to run for president about a year ago because of his anger over Iraq and after friends urged him to use the chance to push his two main policy goals: direct democracy and a revamped federal tax code.
"Gravel advocates a constitutional amendment and federal statue establishing legislative procedures for citizens to make laws through ballot initiatives on most national and local issues...
"He supports the Fair Tax, which would eliminate the IRS and all corporate and individual income taxes, replacing them with a 23% national sales tax on new goods and services...
"Gravel says he is also motivated to run by his opposition to the Iraq war and by a desire to reverse the level of secrecy in government. He is particularly critical of Democrats who supported the invasion...
"At 75, Gravel acknowledges that age will be made an issue in his campaign. 'Now when people talk about age, let's really look at age,' he said. 'Nelson Mandela was in his mid-seventies when he became the head of South Africa, the chancellor who rebuilt Germany, Konrad Adenauer, was in his 80s and then my hero of all time, Pope John XXIII, who they put into power at 68, did more in four years than had been done in the Catholic Church for over 500 years.'
"Gravel grew up in Springfield the son of French Canadian parents who had immigrated to western Massachusetts in the 1920s. After two years of college he became a counterintelligence officer in post-war West Germany from 1952 to 1954. He later graduated from Columbia University.
"In 1957, he staked out to Alaska hoping for a political career in the soon-to-be new state. He lost three local elections before winning a seat in the state legislature and eventually his US Senate seat in 1969.
"That year Gravel started opposition in the Senate to nuclear weapons testing on the Alaskan island of Amchitka, spurring a protest movement out of which Greenpeace was established.
"Since leaving government in 1980 Gravel has been a real estate developer, consultant and founder and head of the Democracy Foundation, which promotes direct democracy."
Category: 2008 Presidential Election
10:33:54 AM 
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