Thank you for adding the text of SR 13, the State Senate Resolution that Sen. Steve Heffernan opposed. Maybe he should have let his position speak for itself if the argument he presented in his July 24 Letter to the Editor to justify his vote is the best he can do.

Sen. Heffernan says, in effect, that he refused to consider the non-binding resolution beyond deciding that it had not met his standards for “proper Due Process” being observed in its creation. That’s confusing because due process is a concept applied to protecting rights granted under laws. It has nothing to do with stating opinions in order to weigh in on public debate, which is clearly all the text of the resolution does.

He goes too far in implying that the “Founding Fathers” were against resolutions like this one. Our history has plenty of examples of non-binding resolutions being approved by legislative bodies without extensive hearings. No court that I know of has ever ruled that such activity violates the Constitution.

In the end, Sen. Heffernan’s letter boils down to frustration that people elected to political office are often regarded as politicians. I’ll confess it’s hard for me to believe he honestly thought a “no” vote wouldn’t be read in Addison County as making a political “I’m with Trump” point. I’m surprised he went public with saying he was disappointed that so many of us reached the predictable conclusion about what happened when he refused to stand up for Mr. Mahdawi’s rights. He was put on the spot and he opted for a de facto acceptance of this chapter in the Trump Administration’s increasingly lawless anti-immigrants and anti-foreign residents campaigns. These are campaigns that courts are repeatedly concluding violate the due process rights of many individuals.

His problem is that most of us know he didn’t need “due process” hearings and presentations before the Judiciary committee to know that. Nor did he need hearings to know that it often takes the legal system a long time to protect due process rights. That is what the Trump administration counts on to execute its strategy. If he is going to claim he’s just defending due process, he would represent us better by being clearer about where it is really being threatened.

Barnaby Feder

Middlebury