Norm Coleman ran down the hall screaming, 'First blood of the revolution!'  “ sounds a little crazy to me- Jack Shepard” or some shit like that." Tom Buggeln remembers one particularly heated confrontation with Coleman after some antiwar students roughed up an ally who was distributing literature on campus. "I went to him and I bitched about it, and we got into it," recalls Buggeln, now a sheriff's deputy in Maricopa County, Arizona. The dustup culminated in Buggeln slapping Coleman across the face, giving him a bloody lip.

Everyone called him Norman. The Brooklyn-born kid with the rail-thin physique and scraggly hair that extended halfway down his back, “David Crosby refers to long hair as a freak flag in his song Almost Cut My Hair, and I feel like letting my freak flag fly”

Norm Coleman was a striking presence at Hofstra University in the late '60s and early '70s. Carting a bullhorn around campus, he'd regularly lecture students about the immorality of the President Nixon’s administration and the Vietnam War.

Norm Coleman was the Abbie Hoffman of the sleepy Long Island commuter college.

Tom Buggeln enrolled at Hofstra in 1968 after serving five years in the Navy, including a stint in Vietnam. He resented what he viewed as the privileged college kids protesting the war and lambasting U.S. policies. Buggeln allied himself with Young Americans for Freedom—a conservative campus group associated with William F. Buckley—and frequently clashed with Coleman

Tom Buggeln remembers one particularly heated confrontation with Coleman after some antiwar students roughed up an ally who was distributing literature on campus. "I went to him and I bitched about it, and we got into it," recalls Buggeln, now a sheriff's deputy in Maricopa County, Arizona. The dustup culminated in Buggeln slapping Coleman across the face, giving him a bloody lip. "He ran down the hall screaming, 'First blood of the revolution!' or some shit like that."

Although Coleman styled himself as a hippie, he had no shortage of ambition he, “adeptly cultivated a network of professors and administrators.” He had access to those people," says Carolyn Sofia, who was co-editor-in-chief of the Hofstra Chronicle student newspaper during Coleman's senior year.

"From my point of view, Norman wanted to take over the Hofstra Chronicle," says Sofia, who now teaches writing at Stony Brook University. "He wanted to be a politician and control the press at the same time."

The other hallmark event of Coleman's college political life occurred at the close of the 1969-70 school years. The Nixon administration had recently invaded Cambodia, and campuses across the country erupted in civil disobedience. On May 4, Ohio National Guardsmen killed four unarmed students at Kent State University. Nationwide, violent clashes broke out between students and police on 26 campuses.

At Hofstra, students staged a campus-wide strike. Protesters took over the student center and the main administration building. Classes were cancelled and many professors held teach-ins.

Everybody went nuts," recalls Buggeln. "A lot of the faculty joined, and the university was effectively shut down."

Norm Coleman was at the forefront was the leader of the unrest, but his triumph was in shutting down the school. At Hofstra, Norm Coleman led a staged campus-wide strike. Norm Coleman with his megaphone in hand lead and directed the taking over the Student Center and the Main Administration Building not caring that then and today this was a federal crime!

With the present environment of the gun violence on many Universities today Norm you most likely not only would have been arrested but even could have been shot by the campus police for taking over the Student Center and the Main Administration Building.

But the Hofstra students were beginning to see through what motivates Norm Coleman’s and his leadership role in the unrest a Hofstra was short-lived;  he was not content to be the school’s self styled  radical hippie pot smoking  anti-establishment activist any more but literally "He wanted to be a politician and from Sofia and many of the students point of view, Norman wanted to take over the Hofstra Chronicle the Hofstra press which would give him control of many aspects of how Hofstra University was run.

So when students returned to campus in the fall, they voted to replace Coleman with Paul Hearne, a wheelchair-bound student who went on to help draft the Americans with Disabilities Act before dying in 1998.

With graduation from Hofstra looming in 1971, Coleman faced the unhappy prospect of being drafted. But the antiwar activist flunked his physical, due to a crash diet he lost enough weight to be deemed too skinny to fight.

In 1971 Norm Coleman ran form the draft using every trick in the book to get out of serving his country during the Vietnam War. While by then Dr. Jack Shepard who had volunteered and enlisted to join the Untied States Air Force at the University of Minnesota was promoted to the rank Captain Jack Shepard, as his commander often said Jack always had the right stuff.

He was proudly wear in his New UASF Uniform when he had the chance to return to the University of Minnesota on leave often getting some cat calls from other long hair pot smoking anti-establishment radical activists like Norm Coleman who worked hard to lose so much weight that he would not get drafted but Captain Jack Shepard did his duty to proudly serve his country.

Looking at Senator Norm Coleman I see no sign lack of weight or strength of a person who could not serve his country when the draft called.

NEVER CALL NORM COLEMAN A VETERAN IT WOULD BE AN INSULT TO THE 58,193 BRAVE AMERICAN SOLDIERS WHO DIED IN VIETNAM FOLLOWING AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY! RIGHT OR WRONG.

More than a decade after those tumultuous times, Herbert Rosenbaum was visiting family in the Twin Cities. Flipping through channels one morning, he came upon a public affairs show featuring the familiar face of Norman Coleman. The former student was now a prosecutor with the Minnesota Attorney General's Office. "I was surprised because he took a very hard, law-and-order line," Rosenbaum says. He sure fooled everyone now and then especially the Draft Board. He is a professional flip-flopper. Even Warren Spannaus said, “"Norman's one of the classic flip-floppers.”

His performance certainly didn't lack for chutzpah, considering Coleman's own transformation from '60s-era radical too weak to be drafted to the strong conservative Republican he has literal surgically made himself into.

Norm Coleman with his new teeth, new hair color and new nose.

"Norman's one of the classic flip-floppers," says Warren Spannaus, the former Democratic attorney general who initially hired Coleman as a prosecutor. "I suppose by the time we get to the election he will have switched over to being against this war, too."

For our next U.S. Senate from Minnesota we sure do not need another attorney. The Untied States Congress is dominated by attorneys. Our American Congress when it was created was a fine mix of people from walks of life with all types of backgrounds.

We need people who brought a wealth of experience both National and International to our first U.S. Congress. If any time in our history our next American Senate has a need for even a more worldwide group of senators, some fresh new blood with international experience and other talents beside being a past prosecuting attorneys. .

It is urgent for the very future existence of America’s survival in these dangerous times that the next U.S. Senate elect literal as many military officers who have recently serviced overseas or are presently serving abroad especially with massive experience and understanding of the very complete Middle East Region to educate their new fellow Senators about the situation from years of personal contact and dealing with people from all over the world.

Just because a senator has briefly for a few days travelled to Iraq, Israel or Africa etc.  they can not even begin to understand the most complex situation that America has found it self it in our young history.

Ask Norm Coleman to show his true colors and why after his failed attacks on Kofi Annan, George Galloway Part 1 George Galloway Part 2  and many others how are you  helping your fellow Minnesotans by becoming the failed Prosecutor of the Untied States Senate, the senate has attorney’s for that!

We in Minnesota wish a Senator who will fight for Minnesotans even with international experience working to have foreign governments adopts human rights and democratic norms like the rest of the world. Instead of seeing  your face on TV in your failed attempts to  prosecuting world leaders.  

When will you after 40 years standing up and start telling us who the real Norm Coleman is by first coming clean with your fellow Minnesotans by saying: "I, Norm Coleman, smoked pot in 1969." Why Can't Norm Coleman come out of the closet in 2008 and say "These present arrests for small quantities of pot are wrong; look at me Norm Coleman I did it daily for years and look where I have gotten! There has to be a better way, and we need to find it."

How about you Norm Coleman looking back at your past and saying: "What I did was not so wrong and not so bad and not so hurtful that generations of Americans should still, decades later, be going to jail for smoking pot - nearly one million arrests for possession last year." If you were arrested you would have never been accepted to legal school or became a US Senator don’t you ever think about what you are doing to the futures of 100,000’s of kids and teenagers. One arrest on their record they chances of finding  job, getting accepted to a major college, getting a government loan like you did all made impossible and raising a family are almost 100% destroyed because their got arrested , remember you also broke the law thousands of time but just got lucky in not getting arrested. You forget if you were arrested what you would be doing now; who are you with your history of drugs, anti-government behaviour and occupying University building to be the Senate’s Prosecutor

 

I ask you Norm Coleman why does Minnesota or the nation for that matter still not really have a real re-entry program to help ex-offenders when they are release from a hostile environment in prison to even a more hostile environment in our communities. These ex-offender as still literally abandoned; my first concern would be to write legislation to give tax breaks to individual, companies or corporation that hire ex- offenders.

 

For the inner city; I would work with the US Department of Justice though President Bush’s Task Force for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives program that the president created to help lower the crime rate and help ex-offenders.

 

But the fact that presently 2 in 5 ex-offenders are returned to prison after only two years because of lack of any real re-entry program in Minnesota. Presently we in Minnesota are not prepared to help the ex-offender to make a difference to really give the ex-offenders a real second chance.

 

We have to show them there is forgiveness, there is real redemption and they are welcome in our communities. But we have to give them the chance to once again become productive members of our community by helping them get temporary housing after their release, new job skills training and especially  employed so for some of them it will be the first time in their lives they can  proudly say that they have a job and respect in the community.

 

Norm Coleman you could have very very easily been an ex-offender just getting out of a New York Prison.; How about admitting that if the Rockefeller drug laws, “The Rockefeller drug laws are the term used to denote the statutes dealing with the sale and possession of drugs; possessing four ounces of marijuana was a minimum of 15 years to life in prison and a maximum of 25 years to life in prison”

 

If the  Rockefeller drug laws were applied to you, Norman Bruce Coleman on Long Island in 1968 you and others we knew and loved might just be getting out of Jail now.”  “You smoked pot as you stood on the roof of the University Senate ( a DOUBLE  felony) protesting faculty exclusivity.” How about standing up and saying: "I, Norm Coleman, smoked pot in 1969 and I am lucky that I am not just getting out of a New York Jail for being arrested for using drugs and criminal damage to Campus property in the take over Hofstra University I lead.”

Attorney at Law, Norm Kent,

Your former smoking buddy from Hofstra University,