John McCain was born August 29, 1936, in Panama at the Coco Solo Air Base during the American control of the Panama Canal Zone. However, he is an American citizen, by virtue of being the son of an enlisted serviceman serving the United States and being on American-controlled soil at the time of his parent’s active duty. He comes from a long line of ancestors with United States military careers. He attended naval base schools wherever his father was deployed, at various Pacific Ocean stations including New London, Connecticut, Pearl Harbor, and Hawaii. After the conclusion of World War 2, he attended St. Stephen’s School in Alexandria, Virginia, and then Episcopal High School in Alexandria, where he graduated in 1954.

He followed in the footsteps of his family’s military history by joining the United States Naval Academy, and went on to graduate from Annapolis in 1958. He was commissioned as an ensign naval aviator in training at Naval Air Station Pensacola in Florida and Naval Air Station Corpus Christi in Texas for over two years. Despite a couple of mishaps in flight crashes from which he escaped injury, he graduated from flight school in 1960 and became a naval pilot of attack fighter aircraft.

John McCain’s first assignment was a station on the aircraft carriers USS Intrepid and USS Enterprise, in the Caribbean Sea during 1962, which put him square in the middle of the Cuban Missile Crisis, one of the major confrontations of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. He then served as a flight instructor at Naval Air Station Meridian in Mississippi, which had a piece of real estate, McCain Field, that just happened to be named after his grandfather in recognition of his grandfather’s service. In December 1966, he was stationed on the aircraft carrier USS Forrestal, where he began missions flying A-4 Skyhawks.

By 1967, the USS Forrestal was deployed as part of Operation Rolling Thunder during the Vietnam War. He flew several attack missions over North Vietnam without serious incident, and he was promoted to Lieutenant Commander. On July 29, 1967, however, he was almost killed in action when a rocket struck his jet as he was launching from the deck. McCain managed to escape the burning jet seconds before the jet’s bombs detonated from the flames, and the detonation sprayed McCain’s legs and chest with shrapnel. He was lucky to survive, as the ensuing fire killed 132 sailors, and injured 62 others, with the incident, recorded by flight-deck video, still used today in U.S. Navy Recruit Training damage control classes. McCain volunteered for further duty, and by late October 1967, had flown a total of 22 bombing missions.

He then became a prisoner of war when a Soviet missile shot down his Skyhawk during an attack run, forcing him to parachute down behind enemy lines in Truc Bach Lake in Hanoi. With heavy injuries, he was surrounded by the enemy, who beat him viciously and transported him to Hanoi’s main prison. They refused him treatment, and beat and interrogated him, but the famous name of his family saved him. When the North Vietnamese discovered that he was the son of a famous top admiral, they hospitalized him and alerted the media to his capture and imprisonment, whereupon the New York Times ran his status as POW on the front page. Altogether, he was to be held as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam for five and a half years.

Upon his release and return to the United States, he was a celebrity, with his meeting with President Nixon while McCain was still on crutches making a stirring photograph. In 1977, McCain became the Navy’s liaison to the U.S. Senate, in a move which he would later describe as the beginning of his second career as a politician. He retired from the Navy in 1981, having been promoted to Captain and having received a Silver Star, a Bronze Star, the Legion of Merit, the Purple Heart, and a Distinguished Flying Cross.

He ran for the seat in Congress as a Republican in 1982. He was elected the president of the 1983 Republican freshman class of representatives, following a stirring speech which deeply impressed the media and the government. His assignment were to the Committee on Interior Affairs, the Select Committee on Aging, and the Republican Task Force on Indian Affairs. He then sought and won as the United States Senator from Arizona in 1987. He remains in this position today.

John McCain ran for President in 2000, but lost to G.W. Bush. He praised and endorsed Bush in the 2004 campaign. He has now announced his second run for President in 2008. He is a hard-right Republican in terms of policy, and has gathered much support for what can only be described as a heroic record of service to the United States. He is popular with the kind of voter known as a “Reagan Democrat”, and it is even said that, had it not been for George Bush, he would have won in 2000.

When America young, if we could have put any sign on the shores of the country for any foreign government to read, it might have said ?No Kings Allowed!? The conviction was strong that this new country would never be a place where royalty dominated the people and were held up for worship as was the abuse in so many countries our forefathers came here to escape.

So many of the protections that were put in place in our founding documents were put there to assure that it would be virtually impossible for anyone to become king in this country. No matter how much power a politician or legislative body were able to amass, our system of government made sure that no one party, person or special interest group would be able to hold power forever and that no one could take over the government, stage a coup and change America into a tyrannical monarchy like we had left behind in Europe.

The separation of powers between the executive, the legislative and the judicial is one of the protections we have in place to make sure no single part of the government can arrest total power from the other two. And while this separation has lead to plenty of friction and battles between the branches of government, that is exactly the way it should be. Better to fight it out and have a government of shared power than to have one branch make all the decisions and rule like a king.

Just as important to the preservation of our unique governmental system is the use of term limits to restrict the extent to which a politician can ?take up residence? in a political office. We are most aware of term limits at the presidential level where we do not allow any one president to serve more than two terms. To some, that should be cut back to one term per president. But the term limit system will probably remain as it is for a long time to come.

This issue can generate a considerable amount of emotional debate. And of course, in a free society political debate is healthy too. How you feel about presidential term limits may have more to do with how much you do or don?t like the current president. If you like him (or her) a great deal, you would probably cheer for the abolition of term limits entirely. And if you oppose the current occupant of the white house, just one term is probably too much. There are some compelling reasons on both side of the argument.

We do trade away a certain amount of experience when we require by law that our current leadership retire after eight years. Each time a new president settles in to the white house, there is a time of learning while that new leadership gets organized and learns how to do this unusual job. Some would argue that forcing leadership from office may be undemocratic because it denies the people the right to return a president to office if he (or she) is doing a good job and should continue in leadership.

One visible downside of term limits is that when a politician is in their last term, there is a time of ?lame duck? leadership because that leader no longer has to work hard to win another election. That leader could become reckless and not provide the quality of service to the country that we expect from our leadership.

But our founding fathers wisely believed in the concept of citizen leadership. Their original vision for the presidency would be that a citizen would go to Washington and serve in the office for a season and then quietly return to private practice to let another citizen lead for a while. While our approach to ex-presidents doesn?t exactly fit that mold, our system is faithful to that vision.

Term limits keeps a constant flow of fresh leadership coming in. Some would say we should tighten term limits at the congressional and maybe even the judicial level. And there are merits to arguments on both sides of that issue. But we can say with assurance that term limits and the other provisions the founding founders put in place have kept our approach to government true to their vision of how this country would be run. And that means ?No Kings Allowed!?

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John Edwards was born June 10, 1953, in Seneca, South Carolina. Being the first person in his family line to attend college, he first attended Clemson University and then transferred to North Carolina State University, where he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in textile technology. This choice of avocation was due to his father’s career at a textile mill. However, he changed his goals and went on to earn his law degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1977.

John Edwards’ early legal career can be described as stunning, while his personal life can be described as a brave struggle in the face of tragedy. Having married early, he had four children, one of whom, Wade Edwards, was killed in an automobile accident at age 16 in 1996. This drove the couple to found the Wade Edwards Foundation, committed to “rewarding, encouraging, and inspiring young people in the pursuit of excellence”. Only eight years after this, his wife was diagnosed with severe cancer in 2004, and the couple have continued to work together while she undergoes extensive treatment.

His legal career has been marked by aggressive trial lawyer activity. His name has become synonymous with winning multi-million-dollar damage settlements. He won a $3.7 million for a client who was permanently brain-damaged by medical malpractice in 1984, a $6.5 million settlement for a child with cerebral palsy who was mistreated by doctors in 1985, and a total of $60 million for other clients.

Having become nationally famous in medical malpractice litigation to the point of encouraging hospitals and doctors to change their policies, he then established his own firm in Raleigh, North Carolina, in 1993. He would go on to further court victories from there, including the famous case seeking damages against the Sta-Rite pool supplies manufacturer for a child who was severely injured by a defective product. The settlement in this case was $25 million, the highest ever in North Carolina legal history.

He is the author of two books: “Four Trials” in 2003 detailing his more notable legal experiences and “Home: The Blueprints of Our Lives” in 2006, a series of interviews with people talking about their childhood homes. He also co-edited another book, “Ending Poverty in America: How to Restore the American Dream”, which laid the grounds for his view that there are “two Americas”, with a vast gulf separating the wealthy from the poor.

John Edwards was elected to be the Senator from North Carolina in 1998, where he was to serve one term before retiring from the Senate. During this term, he co-sponsored 203 bills. Among his actions are co-sponsoring the Iraq War Resolution, supporting and voting for the Patriot Act, sponsoring the Fragile X Research Breakthrough Act, and the Spyware Control and Privacy Protection Act. He served on the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the U.S. Senate Committee on Judiciary. He was also a member of the New Democrat Coalition, an organization within Congress who support moderate Democrat positions and pro-business stances.

He left the Senate in 2004 to start his first run at Presidential election. He lost the primaries in 2004 to John Kerry, in a highly close race where the outcome was virtually a photo finish. In a display of uncommon grace on the part of both candidates, John Edwards became John Kerry’s running mate, with Kerry for President and Edwards for Vice President, but only to lose.

He has announced his second bid as a Presidential candidate once again as of 2006. His main goals are stated as eliminating poverty, fighting global warming, providing universal health care, and withdrawing troops from Iraq.

John Edwards is seen as a fiery hard-left Democrat with a stellar rise to fame and a powerful connection with the lower and middle classes of America. He has consistently fought for the underdog, and his family roots as one of the “common people” together with his current status as an admitted millionaire give him a unique claim to insight into class divisions within the United States. He is both an accomplished public speaker, which stems from his experience convincing juries to find in favor of his clients, and an established literary talent, putting his education to good use. He also has the benefit of experience, having gone almost all the way in the previous Presidential election.

His latest political move is to connect strongly with the victims of the Hurricane Katrina victims, having made several speeches on a tour of the area. His campaign slogan is “Tomorrow begins today.”

In 1994 there was a government agency created that didn?t create a lot of scandal and to a large extent went unnoticed. But this government agency has made a huge contribution to the quality of life for all who get involved with it. It is the agency called Americorps created by the Clinton Administration to replicate the success of the Peace Corps to tap the power of national service to aid those in need across America.

There has been a lot of talk in the last decade about whether the current generation of young people are as ?great? as the generation who fought valiantly in World War II. What the Americorps experiment set out to learn was whether the current generation was as lazy and unpatriotic as was being said in the tabloids or if the current generation, given the chance, could themselves be the ?greatest generation? for our times.

The results have been phenomenal. Hundreds of thousands of young people have come forward to volunteer to serve their country and their fellow citizens through national service. National service is a concept that at one time was a core value to all Americans. At one time, children were taught that upon graduation from High School, every young person owed it to their country to serve at least two years of national service before starting family or their new careers.

What the Americorps experiment found out is that this value has not vanished from the American consciousness. Thousands of young people have flooded to Americorps in such numbers that there is a waiting list to get the chance to be of service. President Clinton?s vision to create an agency that would attempt to replicate the success of the Peace Corps of the sixties set a high standard for quality for Americorps to reach. The Peace Corps has become a standard that we all look to of an agency devoted singularly to contributing to the well being of our fellow man around the world and tapping the energy and good will of youth to accomplish this high goal. The stories of lives that have been changed of both those being helped and of volunteers to the Peace Corps are legionary.

What few know is that since 1961, 160,000 people have served in the Peace Corps. By comparison, since its inception in 1996, more than 200,000 have served in Americorps in hundreds of different capacities. Americorps has surpassed the model for a great example of national service and it has done so quietly, without fanfare and without the recognition that it deserves.

It is easy to recognize the good being done by a service based on the tapping the power of volunteerism in the nation?s youth. We have seen some dramatic examples of how Americans will pour out their service, their hard work, their physical resources and even their money to help their fellow Americans in times of need. Out of some of the most devastating events of our nation?s history such as the 911 attacks and the horror of Hurricane Katrina, we have witnessed some of the most touching moments of human compassion and social consciousness as neighbor reached out to neighbor to help those affected by terrible tragedy.

But it isn?t just the victims that are helped by services such as Americorps. Maybe the ones more blessed are the volunteers. They say that you get back far more than you give when you volunteer. The testimonies of those who have given some of their time to national service are solid proof of that theory. Young people in their late teens and early twenties are just beginning to define who they are and what they will become. By having some months or a few years where their lives are dedicated to helping others will instill a long-term commitment to service, to thinking of others rather than themselves and to patriotism.

The patriotism that takes root in our young people form their time in national service is not just the flag waving, song singing kind we see on display on July 4th. It is a patriotism that we saw in World War II in our soldiers and in our forefathers that gave all to make the country great. If national service can instill that kind of patriotism in our youth, we have no worries that America will not continue to be great for many decades to come.

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Joe Biden was born November 20, 1942 in Scranton, Pennsylvania. He graduated in 1961 from the Archmere Academy in Claymont, Delaware, and in 1965, from the University of Delaware in Newark. He graduated in 1968 from Syracuse University College of Law, and was admitted to the Delaware Bar in 1969. In that year, he began to practice law in Wilmington, Delaware, until 1970, when he was also elected to the Council of New Castle County, Delaware.

His career took a dramatic turn of pace when he was elected to the U.S. Senate as the Senator from Delaware in 1972. He assumed this office in 1973, being the age of just 30. This made him the fifth-youngest U.S. Senator in the history of the United States, and he has continued to win additional terms into the present day, where he is currently the longest-serving U.S. Senator in Delaware history, the fourth-longest serving Democrat Senator, and the sixth-longest serving Senator in office.

He has served on a number of committees in the 110th United States Congress. He has acted as Chairman in the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and the Subcommittee on Crime and Drugs, and has co-chaired the Caucus on International Narcotics Control. Additionally, he has served as a member of the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary, the Subcommittee on Antitrust Competition Policy and Consumer Rights, the Subcommittee on Human Rights and the Law, the Subcommittee on Immigration Border Security and Citizenship, and the Subcommittee on Technology Terrorism and Homeland Security.

Previously, he has been a Chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary from 1987 to 1995, and has been a ranking minority member on that committee for a much longer period. More recently, he has been the ranking minority member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations starting in 1997, and Chairman of this committee from 2001 until 2003.

Joe Biden has been responsible for the creation of many Federal crime laws throughout his career, with a chief focus on drug crimes, crimes against women and minorities, and crimes against civil liberties. He was elemental to the formation of the commonly-known “Drug Czar” policy. The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 is one of his most famous accomplishments. He has also introduced the “RAVE Act” (Reducing Americans’ Vulnerability to Ecstasy Act) and the “VAW Act” (Violence Against Women Act). He has also passed legislation to improve education, with college aid and loan programs, and spear-headed the “Kids 2000″ legislation to promote the accessibility of computers and the Internet to low-to-middle-income children and the vocational training of children in technology careers.

Having been a “career Senator” for 35 years spanning the terms of 7 Presidents, he has now announced his candidacy for President as of January, 2007.

He previously sought election to President in 1988, but quit the race early in December of 1987. He was replaced as the Democrat front-runner by Michael Dukakis. Previous to this, he had been nominated as a Presidential candidate in 1984, even to the point of winning one vote from the Democratic National Convention, but declined the nomination.

Politically, Joe Biden has gotten a reputation as the “sensible center of the Democratic party”. He has been neither too extreme to the left nor wavered too far from his Democratic stance. With his record, he is easily able to win votes from the “tough on crime” crowd. Women and minority voters can find something to like in his past work, and he also has some claim to call himself “pro-education”.

Most importantly, he can stand firmly on his career as a “Washington insider” who knows how to get things done. During previous debates, so common did the phrase “Joe’s right” repeat that he has now made that phrase his campaign slogan. He is very glib and well-spoken, and quick with a sound-bite for the media whenever a microphone is around. Most recently, he has been investigating into the scandal of deleted videotapes showing the interrogation of suspected terrorists, which is an issue that has been in the news and hence on voter’s minds.

The internet has sometimes been compared to the wild, wild west. Part of the reason for that is because in those early days of the frontier, the law was in place to protect citizens of the land but in many cases, it was hard to enforce and criminals ran free to defy laws without fear of being stopped.

When it comes to protecting our kids who go online, in a lot of ways it is the wild west out there. Are there laws on the books to protect our children from being assaulted by internet criminals who would do them harm? Of course there are. But enforcing those laws and catching every bad person who your child might encounter out there in cyberspace is a task that law enforcement is working hard to conquer. But they have not conquered it yet. So cyberspace is in many ways, an untamed frontier.

While we don?t want to go to the days of the wild west where vigilantes roamed the land enforcing brutal justice on criminals, we have to do something. The stories we hear on television and read in the newspapers about children being seduced and abducted right out from under the noses of parents are deeply frightening.

This may be the most troubling thing about cyber criminals who would harm our children. Because the internet is in our homes and even now spreading to the phones and electronic devices of our children, the access of strangers to our kids is virtually unlimited. Kids can get into chat rooms, use social networking services like MySpace and view all kinds of filth online all while mom and dad are just a few yards away watching the news. Because of this unprecedented access, new strategies have to be developed for law enforcement to protect our kids but also so we can partner with them to stop these evil people who would use this wonderful tool of the internet for evil purposes.

At a public level, we want to give our police and law enforcement officials all the help we can to crack down on cyber stalkers so the word goes out to such criminals that it is possible to be caught stalking children and if you are caught, it will be a harsh penalty for this kind of crime. Some have even called for the death penalty for people who stalk children online. How severe we as a society wish to treat crimes of this nature is something for our leaders to help us work through. But our first line of defense is enabling those we trust to protect us to find and lock up these criminals so these crimes can be stopped.

But at this time, we cannot expect law enforcement to be able to stop anyone from approach our children online. So we as parents share in the responsibility of making sure our homes are secure. Just as we put locks on the doors even though police are there to stop intruders, we must secure the internet so the chances of our kids becoming victims is minimized. The three strongest locks we can use to protect our families online are?

. Software. We can put software on our computers that will keep our kids out of web sites where these criminals may lurk. These ?Net Nanny? programs are inexpensive and effective.

. Knowledge. We must teach our children not to talk to strangers online any more than they would in a public place. Cyber stalkers are clever so we must be sure our children understand the risk and do not engage anyone they don?t know and trust online.

. Communication. Keeping the lines of communication open with our kids will assure that if they suspect they are being approached by a cyber stalker, they can come to their parents who can then alert the authorities.

It?s a shared effort to stop these criminals from having access to our children. But by working together with law enforcement and keeping those lines of communication open with our own kids, we can shut down their access to our children and so frustrate their ability to commit crimes against those we love the most.

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Hillary Clinton was born as Hillary Rodham in October 26, 1947 in Chicago, Illinois. She graduated Maine South High School in 1965 and went on to attend Wellesley College, where she majored in Political Science, and graduated in 1969. Her next educational step was to attend Yale Law School, where she received a Juris Doctor of Law degree in 1973.

During the time of her early life and education, it cannot be ignored that she was an activist and had political ambitions from the earliest age. She was a Brownie and Girl Scout, was on the student council at Maine East High School and was honored by the National Honor Society. She spent her teen years both helping to expose voter fraud in the election of President Richard Nixon and volunteered for the campaign effort of Barry Goldwater in the 1964 Presidential election.

At Wellesley College she served as president of the Wellesley Young Republicans organization and then in her first bout of changing from Republican to Democrat, subsequently volunteering in the campaign of Democrat Eugene McCarthy for Presidential nomination. Along with her leadership in many protests and canvasing efforts, she was elected President of the Wellesley College Government Association. She interned at the House Republican Conference, and wound up her college years by deliver the commencement address for Wellesley College.

At Yale Law School she served on the Board of Editors for the Yale Review of Law and Social Action, and later worked at the Yale Child Study Center. She also worked as a research assistant, performed legal duties in cases of child abuse at Yale-New Haven Hospital, volunteered at New Haven Legal Services, and worked at Marian Wright Edelman’s Washington Research Project. Her work in the field of children’s health during this time earned her publication in the 1973 edition of the Harvard Educational Review.

Her post-grad work continued her record of activism for political and social causes, first as staff attorney for the Children’s Defense Fund in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and then as a consultant to the Carnegie Council on Children. She then served as a member of the impeachment inquiry staff which advised the House Committee on the Judiciary during the scandal at the end of Richard Nixon’s Presidency.

Shortly afterwards, she made the fateful decision to suppress her own ambitions in favor of getting married to another person with an active career in law and politics, in the process taking on the last name of Clinton and moving to Arkansas in 1974. However, she still remained active in society and politics, and maintained a law career. She co-founded the Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families, was appointed to the board of directors of the Legal Services Corporation and served in that capacity for four years, and through her husband’s election became First Lady of Arkansas in 1979. She was to continue in this capacity for 12 years, with a brief 2-year hiatus.

Despite her decision to become a mother, she continued to pursue an active career of political, social, legal, and even corporate work. During both her position of First Lady of Arkansas and later as First Lady of the United States during her husband’s eight years as President, her numerous achievements included chairing the American Bar Association’s Commission on Professional Women, serving on the boards of the Arkansas Children’s Hospital Legal Services, chairing the Children’s Defense Fund, holding positions on the corporate board of directors for the corporations TCBY, Wal-Mart, and Lafarge.

Her career at times has been said to overshadow that of her husband. While her husband endured storms of controversy but overall persevered in his eight years as President with some substantial accomplishments of his own, Hillary Clinton chaired the Task Force on National Health Care Reform, was instrumental in the formation of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program of 1997, helped create the Office on Violence Against Women, created the Adoption and Safe Families Act, and did a staggering amount of lobbying for health care, childhood, and family issues.

Hillary Clinton’s name has become synonymous with hard-left social activism, as well as being a firebrand advocate for families and children. Not the least of reasons for this is her New York Times bestseller, “It Takes a Village: And Other Lessons Children Teach Us”, published in 1996. She currently serves as the Senator for New York since 2000, a career which so far has been too brief to distinguish. Her activities as First Lady have earned her a place of respect next to Eleanor Roosevelt in history.

For her Presidential campaign, which she announced in January of 2007, she is looking forward to a tough bout in breaking the “glass ceiling” typically symptomatic of female professionals. However, she can count on a strong support base of women, minorities, and Democrats. Amongst the more liberal Democrats, she is sometimes even referred to as “the Clinton we should have had”.

When we turn our eyes to Hillary Clinton, we see the exciting prospect of our first woman President. We see someone who has the upper hand, with a husband who served two terms in that office and knows how to win it. We see an established states-person, who has already been an activist for various causes, and is even known world-wide. But now we must ask ourselves, what kind of President is she going to make?

In her first term as Senator, she has taken on a wise choice in committees, because they played to establishing a well-rounded portfolio of work, beefing up her weaknesses and keeping up her strengths. We already know that she’s a dervish for the home-front domestic agenda, so the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, with subcommittees on Aging and Children & Families, and the Committee on Environment and Public Works, with subcommittees on Clean Air, Wetlands, Private Property, Nuclear Safety, Fisheries, Wildlife, Water, Superfund, Waste Control, and Risk Assessment, should come as no surprise.

But the Committee on Armed Services, with subcommittees on Airland, Emerging Threats and Capabilities, and Readiness and Management Support, is a refreshing change in her focus. This is the concern that many voters will have about her qualifications: dealing with other countries, some of whom don’t like you. She was also briefly on the Committee on Budget, so she boned up on fiscal matters, and she joined the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, so she will have at least a clue to what the names of European countries are, unlike some Presidents we could name.

Now, can she get things done? Well, she was quick to secure $21.4 billion in funding for the redevelopment of the World Trade Center site. On the other hand, she was booed at a New York audience at the 2001 Concert for New York City shortly after, even though her husband was applauded. This tells us that she can take action, but still has a struggle with her public image. After she fired off an investigation into the health issues faced by 9/11 first responders, she earned new respect from the Uniformed Fire Officers Association and the Uniformed Firefighters Association, which shows she knew how to fix that, or else shows that everybody loves a fighter for public health. She also sought to form a panel to investigate the response to Hurricane Katrina.

She supported and voted for the PATRIOT act, but then the only Senator to draw a Nay there was Russ Feingold. She is one of the “Iraq war wafflers”, who first supported it but later reversed her position and now favors a phased withdrawal from Iraq. Strange for a Liberal Democrat with a focus on civil liberties, she is against gay marriage, but she is in favor of same-sex civil unions. She did vote against the Federal Marriage Amendment that would have made gay marriage prohibition a matter of Federal control, however. She was one of the Senators calling on Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to resign.

She has opposed irresponsible tax cut bills when they’ve come along, citing that it was fiscally irresponsible to reopen the budget deficit, and has voted with an eye towards keeping the budget surplus from Bill Clinton’s administration; however, we’ve managed to plunge back into debt anyway. She has also lobbied to bring more jobs to her state of New York, and has worked to bring broadband Internet access to rural communities and cosponsored the 21st Century Nanotechnology Research and Development Act. So she’s aware that the U. S. needs jobs and to beef up its scientific development.
Hillary Clinton has demonstrated active awareness of matters beyond her usual domestic home front agenda. Partisan critics may feel that her solutions are more “old-school liberal” than what today’s political landscape calls for, while hard-line Democrats may say that she is not nearly Liberal enough. However, between her experience as one of the most politically engaged First Ladies this country as ever seen, combined with a highly conscientious Senate career, she has more than proven herself to the voting public as a viable, even preferred, candidate for the Presidency.

When you are injured, getting a legal claim filed is not always the first thing on your mind. But this is one area that it seems the lawyers descend like vultures on anyone who is injured in any way at all. This is one way that the legal profession gets such a bad reputation. Seeing all of those ?ambulance chasers? and lawyers trying to talk us into filing malpractice claims on television is not a dignified way to portray any profession.

This whole area of malpractice can be pretty confusing to those of us outside of both the legal and the medical professions. But in a strict sense of the word, it may be something looking into if there is a clear case where a doctor either did not do their job or did it so poorly that it caused you additional pain and suffering or injury.

In that kind of situation, you may incur lots of additional medical expenses getting qualified help from an injury caused by a doctor who just didn?t do his or her job right. So it seems only right that the malpractice laws would be there to protect us from being victimized by doctors who were not doing their best to make you better.

The problem is, when it comes to using the malpractice laws to seek some satisfaction for a bad medical situation, it can get quite confusing. The first thing that might help get some definition of what constitutes malpractice is to understand the categories. There are five general types of medical error or ?malfeasance? that can throw your case into the category of malpractice. It might be malpractice?

* If the doctor is not able to diagnose your illness or does so incorrectly.
* If the doctor or medical facility is too slow in providing medical care resulting in further medical problems for you.
* If the doctor fails to perform a medical procedure that is what you need to recover from injury or illness.
* If mistakes were made in prescribing the right medication or prescribing medication that is harmful to you.
* If the doctor fails to explain what needs to be done or is negligent in warning you of negative side effects of your treatment.

If you have suffered any kind of negative outcome that is directly related to your medical treatment on top of your original problem, it?s not too hard to fit what happened to you into this category. If you are a genuine victim of medical malpractice, identifying that is not always the most difficult part of the problem though. The most difficult part may be deciding what to do about it.

This is where that ?ambulance chaser? aspect of the legal profession can be as much trouble as they can be of help. To make a decision about whether the potential outcome of a malpractice suit is worth the effort, you need a nonbiased viewpoint and advice based on the extent of your grievance and injury and how much you need the resolution to continue your recovery. When a lawyer or law firm pursues you so relentlessly to get a malpractice lawsuit going or they advertise to get that kind of business, you get the idea they are not looking after your best interest but their own.

Whatever they try to tell you, malpractice legal actions are not as easy to win as they might seem. There is a lot of burden or proof. So if you feel you have a case, the best thing is to work with legal advisors whom you trust and know they are not going to guide you to an action that is not in your best interest. Sometimes just using that lawyer to negotiate a resolution with the doctor is the best way to go.

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George Phillies was born 23 July 1947 in Buffalo, New York. Growing up in Kenmore and Williamsville, New York, he finished as salutatorian at the Williamsville Central High School. He went on to the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts. There, he earned dual Bachelor of Science degrees in both Physics and Life Sciences, and also a Master of Science and Doctor of Science degrees in 1973. He then joined the staff at the Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology program, doing research.

Interspersed with his academic activities, he joined the United States Army Reserves in 1971, where he achieved the rank of Specialist 5th Class. He took an honorable discharge in 1977.

In 1975, he moved to California, where he began working as a postdoctoral fellow in the Chemistry department at UCLA. In 1978, he moved again to Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he worked for seven years at the University of Michigan as an Assistant Professor of Chemistry. Relocating once again, he moved to the Worcester Polytechnic Institute, and there he attained the rank of Professor of Physics. There, he has attained international fame for his research work in many aspects of physics, amongst them light scattering, soaps, and polymer solutions. He has been elected to several committees within the Worcester Polytechnic Institute, where he has been hailed as the “conscience of the WPI Faculty”.

George Phillies began his political interests in 1994, by organizing efforts in Central and Western Massachusetts on behalf of the Libertarian Party. He was elected to Executive Director of the Massachusetts Libertarian Association in 1996, and was the party nominee for United States Senator from Massachusetts, however, he stood no chance of defeating incumbent (since 1962) Ted Kennedy. In 1998, he made a run for a seat in the House of Representatives as a Libertarian. While he pulled third place, it was noted by the news media that he did well in the debates. In 2004, he was elected as the Regular member of the Libertarian Party of Massachusetts State Committee, and was elected again in 2006 to the same committee, this time as Vice President.

His other activities include editing two national Libertarian newletters, “Let Freedom Ring!” and “The Libertarian Strategy Gazette”. He also chairs both the Pioneer Valley Libertarian Association and the Worcester County Libertarian Association, whose motto is “Domestic Spying, Rendition, Torture, Secret Prisons – Is This Your America?”. In addition, he has also written and published an e-book, titled “Stand Up For Liberty!”, which is a manual for Libertarian strategy.

It seems a shame that the Libertarian party has not won greater acceptance, because when it comes to the issues, George Phillies takes many of the same stands which voters are heard to bitterly complain are missing from the agendas of mainstream candidates. He opposes the war and wants the troops home, as the majority of candidates do. He is pro-civil-liberties, so supports gay marriage, rights to privacy, and contends that we should have a President, not an Emperor. He is in favor of moderate, but effective, tax cuts and spending cuts, without any radical schemes behind it. He is pro-education, supporting privatized schools, in a time when our country’s public schools receive such a failing grade that it hardly seems worth the bother.

He is pro-Second-Amendment, so the gun owners have something to like. He has ideas for fixing health care, immigration, and property rights, which should be favorable views with most Americans. And he’s for ending prohibition – not so popular with some, granted. But in this day when mere marijuana offenders, jailed just for possessing less than an ounce of the drug, make up the overwhelming majority of our prison population and are even forcing violent criminals back out into society to make room for more harmless marijuana users, one has to admit that there may be a point to this view.

In 2006, George Phillies announced his candidacy for President of the United States for the 2008 election. Given the utter vacuum of attention that American society pays to the Libertarian party, there is a long struggle ahead. However, more and more every day, voters are expressing their contempt for the existing monoculture in American politics, and George Phillies represents the most serious candidate to get the Libertarian ball rolling. His stance on the issues provides an excellent opportunity to draw voters from both the Liberal and Conservative line.