Stanley wants Allard 'indicted for treason'
By Charlie Brennan, News Staff Writer
May 4, 2002

Colorado politicos have been expecting fireworks in the battle between Wayne Allard and Tom Strickland, but a third contender in the U.S. Senate race is rolling out the dynamite.

In a candidate profile completed by Libertarian candidate Rick Stanley for the Rocky Mountain News's Web site, he offered this judgment of Allard's first term in office:

"I believe he should be indicted for treason," Stanley wrote of the Republican incumbent. "Hung, when found guilty."

Isn't capital punishment a shade . . . severe?

"Actually, I do" mean that literally, Stanley said Friday. "All of these people (in Congress) are traitors."

Pressed for specifics, Stanley said:

"Wayne Allard voted for the Patriot Act. That violates the Constitution seven or eight different ways. You could take almost any legislation over the last 100 years and say the same thing."

Stanley, like many Libertarians, believes both the federal income tax system and Federal Reserve violate the U.S. Constitution.

Dick Wadhams, the veteran campaign strategist managing Allard's re-election bid, let loose an involuntary, if muted, monosyllabic exclamation of surprise, as the quote was read to him.

After collecting himself, he counterpunched.

"It is unfortunate that someone would engage in that kind of vitriolic and irresponsible rhetoric," said Wadhams, "in light of what this nation has been going through, since September 11th."

But Stanley believes that the "elite of this country are turning our beloved nation into a police state," and that our elected leaders "have failed to honor the oath that each of them swore to defend the Constitution, and are therefore traitors, terrorists from within that must be brought to justice."

The Strickland campaign declined comment on Stanley v. Allard.

Alan Philp, executive director of the Colorado Republican Party, went to the same page of the playbook as Wadhams.

"My only response would be, it's a completely spurious and malicious charge that has no place in legitimate political dialogue in this country, especially in the wake of 9/11," Philp said.

Stanley, co-owner of Stanley Fastener and Shop Supply, states on his Web questionnaire that his diploma from Arvada West High School marks "the end of formal government Socialist indoctrination."

His favorite book, he reveals, is Ayn Rand's paen [sic] to the virtue of free will, Atlas Shrugged. His favorite sports team? The University of Northern Colorado intramural basketball team known as The Fightin' Whites -- although he mislabels them "the Fightin' Whities."

Favorite band? The Beatles.

The Beatles?

Wasn't it John Lennon who sang, "Give Peace a Chance"?