90 Miles From Tyranny : Who In The Heck Is This Guy Tom Cotton Anyways?

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Friday, March 13, 2015

Who In The Heck Is This Guy Tom Cotton Anyways?

The freshman senator who just got elected and got 43 other senators to sign a letter to the Iranian leadership.

Tom Cotton is the youngest member of the senate, where does this young whippersnapper come from anyways? 

Thomas Bryant "Tom" Cotton[1] (born May 13, 1977) is an American politician who is the junior United States Senatorfrom Arkansas. He was a member of the United States House of Representatives, representing Arkansas's 4th congressional district from 2013 until 2015. He is a member of the Republican Party. He is a U.S. Army veteran and a lawyer. Cotton was the Republican nominee for the 2014 U.S. Senate race in Arkansas, and won the election, defeating incumbent Democrat Mark Pryor. At age 37, he is the youngest current U.S. Senator.

Early life and education

Cotton was born in Dardanelle, Arkansas, on May 13, 1977, son of Thomas Leonard Cotton and his wife Avis (née Bryant) Cotton.[2] His father is a Vietnam War veteran who served with the 4th Infantry Division.[3]

After graduating from Dardanelle High School in June 1995,[3] he attended Harvard College, where he wrote for theHarvard Crimson[4], and was a member of the Harvard Republican Club. After graduating from Harvard magna cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Government,[5] he went on to Harvard Law School, where he was taught byElizabeth Warren.[6] He received his J.D. degree in June 2002.[3][7]


Military service



On January 11, 2005, Cotton joined the United States Army and entered Officer Candidate School in March 2005. He was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army on June 30, 2005. Cotton later attended both the U.S. Army Airborne School and Ranger School.[3]


As an infantry officer and platoon leader with the 101st Airborne Division, he was deployed to Baghdad as part ofOperation Iraqi Freedom on May 19, 2006. In Iraq, Cotton was responsible for a 41 man air assault infantry platoon in the 506th Infantry Regiment,[8] and planned and led daily combat patrols. He completed his first combat tour in Iraq on November 20, 2006, and was awarded the Army Commendation Medal, the Combat Infantryman Badge, the Iraq Campaign Medal, and various campaign/service medals.[3]

In June 2006, Cotton gained public attention after he wrote an open letter to The New York Times criticizing the paper's publication of an article detailing a Bush administration secret program monitoring terrorists' finances in which he called for three journalists, including the Times' editor, Bill Keller, to be imprisoned for espionage.[9] The article was widely circulated online and reprinted in full in several newspapers.[10]

Following his deployment in Iraq, Cotton was assigned as a platoon leader at The Old Guard at Arlington National Cemetery,[11] where he was responsible for conducting military honor funerals for veterans. In 2008, he volunteered to return to combat duty, was promoted to captain on August 1, 2008, and deployed toAfghanistan in support of Operation Enduring Freedom on October 15, 2008.

In Afghanistan, Cotton was assigned to Laghman Province, just north of Tora Bora in eastern Afghanistan. He was assigned duty as the operations officer of aProvincial Reconstruction Team, where he planned and resourced daily counter-insurgency and reconstruction operations for an 83-member joint and interagency team.[3] He returned from Afghanistan on July 20, 2009. For his second tour in Afghanistan he was awarded the Bronze Star Medal and various campaign/service medals. He was honorably discharged from the U.S. Army on September 26, 2009 at Fort Myer, Virginia.[3]

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