[Vision2020] Frank Church (was: IB Program)

[Kenneth Marcy]

On 8/8/2012 1:31 AM, Donovan Arnold wrote:
> Personally, I think the least (sic; less) Idaho students are taught by 
> Idaho politicians the least (sic; less) bigoted they will be and the 
> better they will be able to get along with the rest of the world

Donovan, despite that there are numerous instances where the sentiment 
above is true, there is a noteworthy exception who is insufficiently 
remembered these days, and is worthy of mention lest he be forgotten too 
soon.

I am referring to Frank Forrester Church III, who, at age 32, was 
elected from Idaho to the United States Senate in 1956. He won 
re-election three times to serve the state 24 years, the only Idaho 
Democrat to win such re-election. Church won a seat on the Senate 
Foreign Relations committee, and later served as its chairman, following 
in the footsteps of his boyhood idol, Senator William Borah, also from 
Idaho.

In addition to the River of No Return Wilderness named after him, Frank 
Church will be remembered for his chairmanship of the Church Committees, 
which held public hearings on the extra-legal activities of the CIA and 
the FBI, and which lead to legislation better controlling foreign 
intelligence surveillance activities.

Church is widely quoted in regard to the National Security Agency 
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Agency>: "I don't want 
to see this country ever go across the bridge... I know the capacity 
that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it 
that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate 
within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never cross over 
that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return."

In 1976, Church sought the Democratic nomination for president. Although 
he won primaries in Nebraska, Idaho, Oregon and Montana, he withdrew in 
favor of the eventual nominee, former Georgia 
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_%28U.S._state%29> governor Jimmy 
Carter <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Carter>. Church remains the 
only Idahoan to win a major-party presidential primary election.

The Wikipedia article on Senator Church will expand and fill out around 
the selections from it I have given here.


Ken
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