MANVILLE: Rep. Rush Holt talks about his actions to support Fourth Amendment

Holds town hall meeting in Princeton Township

By Jennifer Bradley, Staff Writer
   Congressman Rush Holt visited the Princeton Township municipal building on June 9 to answer questions concerning national issues that ranged from health care to gay rights.
   Mr. Holt, a Democrat running in a reconfigured 12th District that now includes Manville, began the session with a statement about the importance of feedback from his constituents.
   ”I want to hear from you,” he said. “In fact, to do my job I need to hear from you.”
   Joan Lugin from Monmouth Junction addressed the power of constituent feedback and asked if individual letters written to him make a difference.
   ”I represent about 730,000 people and 44 towns,” said Mr. Holt. “So do letters make a difference? Yes. Does each individual letter make a difference? Sometimes.”
   Mr. Holt also reinforced the accessibility that he emphasized in his opening statement.
   ”I do not believe that I was elected to go to Washington and operate on my own,” he said. “I have a very constituent-oriented office and a very constituent-oriented philosophy.”
   Participants asked for further transparency when Mr. Holt was questioned about recent legislation that he has been voting on.
   Mr. Holt said that since the Democrats are the minority, they have had trouble passing legislation.
   ”I think the (Republican) leadership is less willing than any previous majority to allow political minorities to have any successes,” Mr. Holt said. “The result is we end up with legislation that will not go anywhere.”
   Mr. Holt said, however, that he has gotten money appropriated for flood control in New Jersey and for suicide prevention. He also said that he has been spending more time than he anticipated on the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, which deals with search and seizure, and has been generally voting against laws that have death penalty provisions.
   Mr. Holt said the death penalty is not just an aesthetic, moral or ethical issue, but he believes that there is not enough evidence to prove that the death penalty is actually effective in achieving what it wants to accomplish.
   ”For anything that final, we should not be operating on evidence that is equivocal,” Mr. Holt said.
   Mr. Holt also spent a great deal of time discussing the Fourth Amendment and said that he recently got approved an amendment to the security bill that outlawed using armed drones in the United States against Americans.
   He also spoke at length about how the Fourth Amendment relates to racial profiling and called racial profiling “ineffective and unacceptable.”
   Azra Baig, who works at Princeton University Medical Center at Plainsboro, commended Mr. Holt for his work in fighting racial profiling.
   Mr. Holt said that profiling is not a good way to find genuine terrorists. According to Mr. Holt, by engaging in profiling, the community whose cooperation is needed for this kind of policing ends up feeling alienated. He said Muslims and other targets for racial profiling want to help the police find terrorists, but they will not offer assistance if racial profiling prevails.
   Ted Mills from Princeton asked Mr. Holt about what can be done for lesbian and gay rights over the next few years.
   Mr. Holt used the question as a way to discuss anti-bullying legislation that he and Sen. Frank Lautenberg have introduced to would require every college and university to have a comprehensive anti-bullying policy. Mr. Holt said the motivation was the case of Rutgers University student Tyler Clementi, who committed suicide after his roommate used a webcam to view Mr. Clementi’s sexual encounter with another man. The roommate, Dharun Ravi of Plainsboro, was convicted of 15 counts, including intimidation, in the case and was released this week after serving his 30-day jail sentence.
   Mr. Holt called for the repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as a legal union between a man and a woman.
   ”The public climate has changed enormously since the Defense of Marriage Act was passed,” said Mr. Holt. “There are laws that only apply to married couples, and the protection of those laws should be extended to same-sex couples.”
   Mr. Holt said he disagrees with Gov. Chris Christie’s opinion that a referendum should be held on same-sex marriage in New Jersey. Mr. Holt believes the public is already prepared and the legislation ready to allow lesbian and gay couples to marry.
   Mr. Holt discussed health care and his opinion on the Affordable Care Act. He said the act would extend to all citizens the health care that people over 65.
   ”It would be an enormous psychological change if we could say you’re an American, so you can expect to have health coverage,” Mr. Holt said.
   He said people may argue about how the Affordable Care Act is implemented, or even if the country can afford it, but he emphasized the act makes health care not an afterthought, but an expected condition.
   ”You might even argue that we move toward considering health care as a human right,” he said.
   Although most of the questions of the forum dealt with national issues, Alexi Assmus, a Princeton resident and a volunteer leader of the Princeton Citizens for Sustainable Neighborhoods’ petition against AvalonBay, attempted to get Mr. Holt’s support for this local fight. AvalonBay is proposing a residential development on the site of the former Medical Center at Princeton on Witherspoon Street.
   Mr. Holt said he endorses affordable housing, but does not know too much about AvalonBay and believes that the issue should be left up to the mayor. He did, however, encourage Ms. Assmus to keep fighting for what she believes.
   Mr. Holt ended the forum by again encouraging everyone to contact him with concerns, since he could not address everyone’s questions that day. He said he considers all feedback.