from federal gun regulation. This attempted nullification legislation was emulated by several other states, which passed similar legislation, but never went into effect, because the federal courts struck down the law on federal preemption grounds. During his tenure in office, Schweitzer proposed the introduction of state-level single-payer health care in Montana, based on the Canadian model. Under Schweitzer, Montana opened a government-owned but privately contracted primary care clinic for state employees, but did not succeed in obtaining HHS permission for the state to import prescription drugs from Canada as a cost-savings measure. Schweitzer was critical of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the federal health care reform legislation championed by President Barack Obama, saying it did not go far enough in controlling health-care costs, and describing it as a "corporatist" policy, but did not outright oppose the ACA. In May 2006, Schweitzer granted posthumous pardons to 78 persons convicted in 1918 and 1919 of sedition during World War I for making comments critical of the war. These were the first posthumous pardons in Montana history. The individuals had been convicted under Montana's 1918 Sedition Act (which was subsequently repealed), one of the broadest and harshest of its time: one man went to prison for calling food rationing a joke, while others were targeted because they refused to kiss a U.S. flag or to buy Liberty Bonds. Schweitzer described his pardons as an important reminder of the importance of individual rights in wartime. Following the suicide of Iraq war veteran Chris Dana in 2007, Schweitzer started the Yellow Ribbon Program, a joint program between the Montana National Guard and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs that helps military personnel returning home from overseas to transition back to civilian life. In a 2008 biography, Schweitzer expressed support for some form of same-sex civil unions, and in 2013 he expressed support for legal recognition of same-sex marriage. On foreign policy and national security, Schweitzer took positions to the left of Hillary Clinton. In a series of speeches in Iowa in 2013, Schweitzer criticized Clinton and other Democrats who supported the 2002 Iraq War Resolution and called on Democrats to "keep the Iraq war vote in mind" when nominating a presidential candidate in 2016. Schweitzer also occasionally criticized the Obama administration's foreign policy, referring to it as supportive of the "military-industrial complex." In 2014, Schweitzer expressed opposition to domestic surveillance, asserted that "a lot of