I know it's weird

But I feel sorry for Paul Ryan, just a bit.

He had this opportunity to talk to Americans who weren't like him. Very few people are as candid as the poor. I can only imagine what they talked about but maybe he got a little picture into that life, something that might spark some compassion in him.

And who knows exactly how this little stop at a soup kitchen was supposed to go or could have gone. Maybe somewhere in the back of his mind as he's scrubbing a pot that was, reportedly, already clean he's thinking: what's gone wrong with things? I'm a decent person and I want to help people. Why does everyone seem to be so riled against me?

Or maybe not. Maybe he's just thinking: I need to make sure I look good for the cameras. 

Hard to say. Certainly, he's using this moment to forward his political career and if he fucks up the non-profit status of that kitchen then I hope he does all he can to amend that. 

But I just have to wonder.

Letter sent 3.21.12

Dear Mr. President,
I hope you’re well. As always, if you can’t reply, that’s fine: I prefer nothing over a form letter. To whomever may be reading this because it’s their job, I thank you for your time, especially on this one.

Sir, I’m about to turn 40. As is the tradition in our culture, birthdays are often times of reflection and ideas and I’d like to, instead of talking to you about what seems to be going wrong, what America could do.

While reading The American Soul by Jacob Needleman, I’ve come across a very interesting idea; America is a country about big ideas. Big ideas rooted in a core that says that all human beings are created equally and we should treat them as such.

I’m sure I don’t have to articulate our failings as a country along those lines to you. But I do want to suggest that this is something we are missing in our country; the big idea. So I figured I’d talk about a few big ideas I’ve had, and at the end ask us: Why not?

Big idea: Americans deserve better government.
We really do. You know it, I know it: everyone knows it. But how do we get there? I have three ideas here: first make government more transparent.

Mr. President, you have been one of the worst offenders in this category, foiling FOIA requests and going after whistleblowers with more fervor than your predecessor. But one way to get people involved is for them to understand how things work and to be able to speak out fearlessly when they feel something is wrong. But how will our citizens know something is awry unless they are given information from those who comprehend how it works and are able to point to those accountable?

So I call upon you to make good on your promises of a more transparent government. We deserve it.

Second: Make November 4th a national holiday. If voting really is important, give us the day off to do it. (Plus, it gives the citizens a little bonus. Who couldn’t use some extra time off or, time and a half for working on such an important day?)

Third: institute mandatory sunset dates.
This is a huge step. If policies like the PATRIOT Act have mandated sunset dates, then they have to be revisited or let to go away. If certain farm subsidies, say for corn, were sunset in order to subsidize farmers making under $250,000 a year, for example, that might improve the agricultural backbone of this country. Plus; of the corn growers of America aren’t successful by now, they won’t ever be.

If the management of organizations; the Fed, the CIA, the FDA, the SEC had to resign after say 15 years-long enough to master it and make recommendations to the next group but without the security of a lifetime appointment-then perhaps the new blood would help refresh agencies with men and women who have ideas that can help change things. But not change things so much that we eliminate critical services nor find ourselves perpetually at the mercy of those who would distain government’s role in important matters.

Big idea: Americans need a common experience.
It is, by now, blatantly apparent to anyone paying attention to our discourse that Americans just don’t work together like they used to. The idea of America and being an American just isn’t quite enough: we need to have a common experience, an action that causes us all to, as was said in the movie Heartbreak Ridge “Eat a little of the same dirt.”

So I suggest making a mandatory civil service, for every unmarried American, to serve between the ages of 18 and 20. This service can be avoided by enlisting in the military, if one so chooses. The point is; by bringing young people from different walks of life together and giving them tasks where they have to rely on one another, there is an opportunity for Americans to actually see and experience different points of view.

We have a technology that allows us to share our experiences but we lack a common experience to share! This is one reason that cooperative politics have declined so much since the 1980’s, I believe: the statesmen who were once often bound together due to the draft, have moved on from public life, leaving those who have never had to step outside their own circle of experience.

As an added bonus, this would give young people an opportunity to see the country, to network, and to mature a little bit before entering college or trade school or whatever path of higher learning they might choose.

Big idea: Americans deserve equal access.
There is a rapidly decaying system of infrastructure in America, Mr. President. Roads and bridges in decline, a water and sewer system just waiting to implode and, just as importantly, a realm of information that is only available through technology, access to which hasn’t been updated in decades. But just as important as access to transportation and clean water, so is our access to the realm of the internet.

I am not suggesting that the government merely give away internet access to people or companies. Just as the government does not give away cars for people to use the roads with, nor sinks for people to run water through.

Let us rebuild; making the country more efficient, using new technologies to replace the roads, pipelines and wires that service us, to make this country a better place that allows for people to have the opportunities they need to make a life in this country.

And when we build for access, let us remember the importance of safety, not just in our physical world but in our online interactions. Let’s be a country that protects the privacy of our citizens online. It allows us to entertain unapproved or ‘dangerous’ thought and this is one of our greatest strengths as a nation. Protect it.

Big idea: America wants to be a beacon to the world.
Our standing internationally comes from two places, as I see it: our culture and the policies our government chooses to follow.

Our society has allowed us to develop a culture that is everywhere, that nearly every country is influenced by and takes part of: the movies, the videogames, the television, the books, sporting events and the music all flow out. Much less of the world’s culture flows in. That’s a good thing.

Now please, get the government to stop wrecking that. Two not so simple things that would probably go a long, long way.

First: we end the drug war. It’s been shown to affect poor Americans, and especially black Americans, disproportionally and is a mostly a way for law enforcement to make money, while our 4th Amendment rights are eroded.

Ending this war not only gives us money to invest in access and schools, it would probably go a long way for improving our relations with countries to the North and South of us, in addition to ending some of the most horrific violence I’ve ever heard of in Mexico. It would give the US a reason to stop fighting wars over opium and start providing humanitarian aid to those who need it.

It would end what has been forty years of failed policy. I think we would all agree, that’s more failure than anyone should have to stand.

Second: we cease giving military aid and backing to Israel.

Mr. President, the nation of Israel is not special. At the moment, I’d even go so far as to say they are acting like the spoiled little kid who acts like a bully, because they know their big brother will beat up anyone who tries to stop them. They are just as complicit in the evils of war as any other party involved in that area and until we stop supporting them unconditionally and start being more evenhanded to everyone in the region, a huge part of the world will hate us and rightly so, because we are being unfair, and being unfair is just an Unamerican value, sir.

If we value justice, we cannot be unjust.

We will have to make apologies. We will have to work harder than ever to talk to and create peaceful circumstances.

But it can be done. The question is; are we willing to do it? I hope so and it will have to start with you saying: no more will America support this failure.

Big idea: America needs to be the best country.

Mr. President, our country started off in a very unique way; we started off as an idea. All men are created equal and bestowed rights merely because they exist.

And as we’ve grown up, that idea has been something that has been allowed to do what it wasn’t, 200 years ago: encompass all the people of this nation and provide us with more ideas. It has been allowed to grow, to evolve beyond the limitations of the men who created it! That. Is. Amazing. By any view of the world that is just jaw dropping.

We have survived and thrived, I believe, because we had the best idea(s) and we allowed people to pursue those ideas, even ideas that were unpopular. Every time we have expanded upon the ability of the people to expose themselves to new ideas, our country has prospered in so many ways: from the abolition of slavery, to the rights of women, the GI Bill, allowing more men and women to go to college, the great society, to the civil rights movement, the Americans with Disabilities Act, even through today, with the use of the internet to expose more ideas and support the rights of gay and lesbians across the country, those ideas of freedom and dignity and access, have been what has brought men and women from across the world to live here. We never had the smartest race, we brought in the smartest people.

We need those ideas again. We need to support ideas again.

Mr. President, we need educated people, more than we ever have before.

And by educated, I don’t merely mean universities. I mean trade schools, community colleges, high schools. Anywhere an American goes to learn something about the world around him or her. Ideas need to become a priority for us again, because we can create our future out of them.

But we have to support the realm of ideas, the place where we dream something new! Take the money from the drug war, from the incarceration of millions, and put it into schools and teachers and programs that support the endeavors of Americans to be more to the world than just consumers.

We were founded on ideas. Let’s love them too.

A new shape to our ideas are coming, Mr. President, involving how we interact with each other. I want you to help us get at the forefront of it.

I got to try the L’Agent Orange from Cascade Brewing. Sour ale kept in Makers Mark barrels. Pretty amazing, though you’ll have to come to Portland to get it, sir.

Sincerely,

Letter sent 2.27

Dear Mr. President,
Lately I have been finishing off Stephen Erikson’s Malazan series of books. I prefer to read while taking the bus to work, since books still seem to be one of the best ways to really engage in a story and it allows me to tune out the daily commute. I have no idea when someone in your position might get reading like that done; one of the biggest drawbacks to being in charge has got to be having to rely on other people giving you information when you used to get your own. The Malazan books are a high fantasy series (sword and sorcery) that, as it approaches its conclusion, has an undercurrent theme of the decline of an empire.

For example:
“The more civilized a nation, the more conformed its population, until that civilization's last age arrives, when the multiplicity wages war with conformity. The former grows ever wilder, ever more dysfunctional in its extremities; whilst the latter seeks to increase its measure of control, until such efforts acquire diabolical tyranny.”-Duiker, Toll the Hounds

It is difficult, as an American, to not read passages like this as though they are a commentary on my own country. I never thought we, of all countries, would have an empire but the signs are too great to ignore. Which is mostly an aside, really: the situation is what it is.

It does seem, however, that the battle is between the have and the have nots. I seem to read daily about how corporations are getting their way because they have the money to walk the halls of power, while individuals find themselves increasingly marginalized and, as a result, behaving in less and less appropriate manners. An easy example of this would be the recent SOPA and PIPA acts; things that were so blatant in their attempts to suppress “piracy” that they actively overstepped the rule of law, yet were being seriously considered, seriously enough, anyway, for massive protests to be required in order to put a stop to them. Of course that isn’t the end of it, so what it demonstrates to me is how much effort is spent to increase or insist upon control.

A very similar argument could be waged against the drug war: we have lost it under any rational metric. However, instead of changing the policies of failure, a change that has shown demonstrable improvement in Portugal, we continue to fund increased surveillance and bigger prisons.

Why else would we do that, except to ensure control against a society that is increasingly insisting upon their rights?

And who benefits from having all these people jailed? Who benefits from ensuring that the authorities know what kinds of thoughts we are interested in?

This is the question I find myself asking over and over: Who benefits from this? Who benefits from curbing our rights so, to extending copyright beyond what it should be, to concentrating money at the top, starving schools for funding and imprisoning our citizens?

The answers seem to keep coming back to large corporations.

If, as you said in the last State of the Union, you believe that government should only do for people what they cannot do for themselves and no more, then why should our government assist any corporation that is successful? Corporate subsidies, laws dangerously slanted to their advantage, no-bid contracts: how is this not stepping into do something for these entities that they should be able to handle on their own?

They are dangerously close to creating a tyranny of the minority and what I need from my government is to protect me from that. Or at least level the playing field so that, as a nation of laws, I can expect those laws to apply in a just manner.

I think you also missed a golden opportunity in the State of the Union, sir. You said that you would sign a bill banning insider trading tomorrow, if it was sent to you. Which is great! However, there was an opportunity for you to tell the people of the country to motivate our representatives and it went by, lost. There was a chance to talk to us and I’m thinking you need to take it, sometime. The State of the Union was critical for Congress when television didn’t exist but now it’s a moment when everyone is watching and I believe you have a chance to challenge Americans to continue to do something great.

Anyway, that’s what I’ve got for now. Other big ideas will come next time, I’m sure. My beer recommendation is Deschutes’ Red Chair NWPA (northwest pale ale—just a fancy name for a solid IPA) and I’ve just started reading Jacob Needleman’s American Soul. I’m about ten pages in and I’m thinking everyone should read it.

As always, I hope we get to have a discussion of some kind, someday but if not, that’s alright. Best to you and yours.

Sincerely,

Letter sent 1.26.12

Dear President Obama,
I hope your holidays were enjoyable! I’m writing this too soon to tell you about mine though but I have high hopes that things will be fine.

Perhaps you’ve heard of the saying “The good is the enemy of the great”?

That’s what I’ve been thinking about, when pondering some of the issues facing our country. Mostly, sad to say, how we as a nation seem to be settling for good and what good is defined as seems to be sliding towards the negative, wherever it can slide.

When I read about how your Justice Department fails to go after the people who broke (or likely broke) laws governing Wall Street so that our financial markets remain secure, or how people or corporations who were brought to trial were imposed paltry fines, I feel like we have merely accepted what is good, instead of what is great.

My brain drug up that saying, “The good is the enemy of the great”, after watching a piece on 60 Minutes, the one asking why nobody was being prosecuted for corruption on Wall Street, as a result of the housing crisis. During that broadcast, a woman charged with following up on reports of corruption at Countrywide said that she was told by a broker (I’m paraphrasing here) “I’m not paid by the quality of the mortgages I bring in.” That statement alone says much about what we are OK with as Americans, now.

It took about two days before I remembered a report I read on food in this country and why farmers are reluctant to switch to practices that are less harmful to the planet and provide better tasting food but will give them a lower yield. Again, I’ll have to paraphrase: “I am not paid by the quality of the tomato, but by how many tons I ship.”

On a personal level, I see this all the time: people ordering Pabst Blue Ribbon at a pub instead of an excellent microbrew, when the difference can be as little as seventy-five cents because they want more, not better.

Mr. President, if I want volume I’ll listen to Metallica. The 80’s stuff: I can’t stand anything done between 1990 and 2002.

In great societies, justice is something that comes to everyone, regardless of their station in life. Is pursued with appropriate vigor and more importantly, is celebrated. A society that recognizes and settles for the powerful doing what they want, regardless of the rules, is one that has settled for the good.

Neither of us is foolish enough to believe that the powerful will never find themselves in situations where they are untouched by the consequences of the law but to use that as an excuse to do nothing misses the entire point of having a society where one of the defining characteristics is that everyone is equal under the law, entirely because they are NOT equal (and in some cases cannot be equal) in many other places.
Yet here we are as a nation, in a situation where Americans don’t think that they are getting treated fairly in comparison to the wealthy. In many cases, they can demonstrate how this is true, pointing to situations both social and legal where a wealthy person had power they should not have. The proof is right there in front of their eyes and most are not in a position to change this.

To extend this to the farming world; the groceries I am able to purchase that are made with corn subsidies are significantly cheaper. I can get more of that food, but they are terrible for me in volume. Every respected study demonstrates this. Yet what is emphasized is more, instead of the quality of the food and the ability to feed ourselves as a nation and beyond, into the future.

Now, I don’t know how to address that mindset, precisely, but I do know that the consequences of relentless greed in our country have been more than adequately demonstrated and because we have decided to accept the good instead of strive for the great, those people who instigated this set of circumstances are not investigated nor prosecuted. That fact eats at us, as though we are being fed unhealthy food, especially when we see that your Administration has gone after government whistleblowers with a vengeance or that people responsible for our current woes as a nation, especially fiscally, are being put in positions of power in the government.

I don’t know how we become great until we expect greatness and that expectation has to come from the top as well as the bottom, Mr. President. I think we can be great; give us the circumstances to do so.


In the meantime, if you haven’t had a chance to try Sam Adams’ Mighty Oak ale, I recommend it. Solid malty brew with a hint of vanilla. I just don’t want to end on a down note, you know?


Sincerely,


P.S. Nice State of the Union address. Maybe I’ll talk about that next time.

Letter sent 12.21.11

Dear President Obama,
This is, admittedly, a little strange: as a public figure-one whom I employ, no less-I have a sense of you but we’ve never met. Yet I’m writing a letter, something that, in this day and era has become, I hope, a bit more personal than it used to be. That you don’t know anything about me is what makes this unusual, at least from my end.

Perhaps a few details will help: I’m 39 and I just bought my first house in Portland, OR. I’ve lived in the Pacific NW all my life but I was fortunate to travel to Europe in college and that did a great deal to broaden my horizons. I’ve also been lucky enough to have enough money to indulge the occasional whim and still keep a roof over my head. I brew beer and play games as a way of making and strengthening my social circle. I’ve been dating my girlfriend for seven years and I’m very glad she likes me as much as she does. I read as much as I can, write when I’m able and walk every day to get some exercise.

I don’t expect you will read this, nor have the time to respond. That’s OK: I’m writing this just as much for me as I am to you. If this letter is fortunate enough to make it to you personally, then I count myself lucky. I’d prefer not to get a form letter back. I’m a citizen and I have some things to say. If we can’t have a discussion, well that’s alright but I’d ratjer we didn’t have a discussion because you’re the President and busy and I’m a citizen and busy than us having a ‘pretend’ discussion where I get pre-stamped responses.

Maybe when this is all over, and the letters have been written, your term is done and things settle down a little (which may be some time away, I understand) then we could have a beer. In the meanwhile, let’s get to talking, shall we?

I’ve been watching things as closely as I’m able and I’ve heard you use the phrase “it’s the right thing to do” in the State of the Union Address. I’m not sure that you and I agree on what the right thing is, unfortunately. Is the right thing to do prosecuting, with even greater vigor, whistleblowers in the government, or firing people who have a different point of view?

Does doing the right thing include using drones against faraway people, especially those whom the government has not used evidence to prove they are a threat to the citizenry, not going after the fraud on Wall Street, despite the tremendous wave of economic damage they have wrought upon not only our country but the world, or advocating the rights of corporations through things like the SOPA act, or dangerously extending the government’s powers via the Patriot act, up to and including bill S. 1867 which would allow for indefinite imprisonment, even of US citizens, accused of terrorism, and that they be tried via the military instead of the civilian court system?

Is the right thing to do to employ many of the architects of our current crises with the direction of fixing it? To allow the people to get away with crimes both fiscal and moral?

That, of course, is just a sampling of things that I am aware of and when I hear you talk about the right thing to do, I can’t help but question what it is that you know about the right thing versus what I know about the right thing to do. I accept that you are privy to information that I am not but I would be willing to bet that in most of those cases, the information you know doesn’t change a thing.

Naturally, I don’t blame all of this on you. You have to make choices and they can’t all be good ones. The health care debacle that came last year, the manufactured debt ceiling crisis; these events do not settle on your shoulders alone.

But you’re the person I talk to, because you’re the person who needs to speak up.

Which leads us to what I think is the next problem.

America suffers from a lack of vision. As the President of the US, I expect you to articulate a vision for us, to raise the bar and tell us what the great thing is that we, as a country, should be striding for.

But you do not articulate that vision. You articulate standards or, sadly, you articulate nonsense. The best example of the former I can think of is in the last State of the Union, you told us that our goal should be to cut fossil fuel dependency by 80%.

No. That is not our goal. Our goal is to cut fossil fuel dependency for personal vehicles 100% by 2030. No exceptions. That’s a goal. Anything else is a standard, is something that can have exceptions made to it.

Of the latter, the phrase ‘win the future’ comes to mind. This is a tragic use of language for anyone who is paying attention. No one can win something that doesn’t exist, Mr. President, and the future, by its very nature, is always out of reach.

My problem with that language is simple: Americans don’t like things that are unwinnable, (see our dispassion for soccer, a game that willfully accepts ties) and despise things that allow us to get away with less than our best (see the public’s current contempt for Congress.)

We want to be challenged, Mr. President. More than anything else, I think this is what is lacking: great things are not asked of us, expectations are no longer high, and when someone maliciously screws up, they are no longer punished. I don’t mean punishment for failure (although I think consequences still should exist,) I mean punishment for wrongdoing. It may have always been true that people with wealth and power could get away with more but at least in America, for a time, there was an effort to ensure that everyone was equal under the law.

This includes those who hate us. Which is why, yes, it IS hard to bring terrorists to trial in order to bring them to justice but it is something that we, as a country, need to do. It is painstaking to ensure economic equality, to prosecute for difficult crimes and yet by not doing these things, you and those like you in the Beltway, are essentially saying: We don’t think America can handle the difficult choices or make the needed sacrifices.
But we can, so long as it is fair and just.

We need to do the difficult thing, Mr. President. We need to be challenged to be our best and we, as a people, need you to articulate that goal for us, so we have something to reach for. Something concrete and accomplishable, something that does not allow for failure, something that is bolder and defies the wasteful paths of the last three decades.

And we need you to set that bar and then let us meet it. I am, as a citizen, expecting great things from you, because those expectations need to be met and I voted for you in part because of the merits you brought to the table, suggesting that you would be able to the task. Ask of us. Ask great things of us, but ask them of all of us or do not bother, Mr. President.

Merry Christmas and happy holidays to you, your family and friends, sir.

Sincerely,

Dear President Obama

Basic tax information is available to anyone with an internet connection, readable by anyone with sense organs and understandable by anyone with half a lick of common sense.

QUIT FUCKING ABOUT AND COMPROMISING ON EVERY GODDAMNED THING.

Jesus. I voted for someone to lead the country, not play the violin while the city burns.

Who Benefits?

I've been thinking about the opposition to healthcare by the Republicans, the drive they're making against their own people. And it hit me; I get why Big Pharma and the Insurance industries are opposed to this, but why anyone else? Why the Republican drive to fuck over their own citizens, when study after study says that businesses lose billions every year due to illness, or paying for care for the uninsured? They aren't presenting an alternative beyond 'hey everything is fine!' So what the hell is going on here?

Then I got it; Roosevelt.

If Obama is successful at bringing healthcare to this country, especially if he does it over the objections of Republicans then they will truly be the marginalized party, and damn near powerless for decades. Perhaps longer. And they're afraid of that (understandably). History was not kind to the Republicans in the late 1930's. But their fear is costing us lives, so fuck 'em.

An open letter to Sen. Obama

Dear Senator,

You lost my vote when you voted for the FISA bill. You said it was a bad bill. Senator Feinstein, who sits on the committee that oversees the wiretapping program and knows more than you about the consequences of this bill, said it was a bad bill. You voted for it anyway.

Which brings you into a direct clash with my values; when things are wrong, you don't let go of your principles even if you're going to lose. I know; You are in the game to win it. I know; your political opponents would hammered you on it. But they hammered you with Rev. Wright too, and you took a stand and treated us like adults and people stopped short and listened. On this bill, however, you voted for it, and then said it was a good compromise.

It wasn't. That was all I really needed to not vote for you. Your political career has been brief, your rhetoric not always backed up by consistent actions. This crucial moment came, and you let it pass.

People told me I shouldn't care, people told me that too much was at stake, that McCain was just going to further us into disaster. I felt I had principles here and I had to stick by them; retroactive pardoning of actions that violated the Fourth Amendment was not something I could stand for.

You still haven't convinced me to change my mind. You say you stand for change, but you don't articulate a strong vision. Healthcare, alternative energy, infrastructure both electronic and physical; these are big ideas we could be leaders in and are critical to our country's ability to be a good one, but you don't put it into a singular purpose as far as I'm concerned.

The smaller issues; homeland security, economic regulation, education, these things are bog points, and yes, you speak with great conviction on them but they don't convince me anymore. Solving these problems won't save us, because they are connected to larger ideas. Your job is to give this country a vision and then help us carry it out.

Worse, I am terrified that there will be no way to enforce the will of the people when you are elected. The ability to ignore the people in willful defiance of the disasters that he caused, has been one of the greatest tragedies of our current President. How can I be sure you will do what you say you will do?

I couldn't, so I couldn't vote for you.

You are fortunate, sir, that I am a reader. That I want to make sure I am doing the best I can, and in order to do that I try to absorb all the information possible that is available to me.

Esquire magazine published their endorsement issue recently. Perhaps you've seen it. You're no doubt aware of it, especially since they endorse you. They do a better job of describing things than I, both your strengths and weaknesses, why they think you're the man for this job. They evaluate McCain too, quietly but smartly evaluating why they think you should be President of the United States.

None of that convinced me. This did: Justice John Paul Stevens is eighty-nine years old, the editors of Esquire reminded me...

In January of 2009, if and when Barack Obama is inaugurated as the forty-fourth president of the United States, Associate Justice John Paul Stevens will be closing in on his thirty-fourth year on the Court and his eighty-ninth year on earth. And there, really, you have it. The best argument for the election of Barack Obama as president of the United States is written quite clearly in the peaks and squiggles of John Paul Stevens's EKG.

Just as, no matter how impressive John McCain could ever be, Sarah Palin should never, ever be allowed to be President, so must Justice Stevens be replaced by someone who truly believes in the Law of the Land.

So, Senator Obama, I will be voting for you in this election.

I do not like it. You have not earned my trust, you have not met any of my expectations. I am going to have to leave some of my principles behind in order to vote for you. In a very real way, I am doing what you did when you voted to pass the FISA bill, and I do not like that at all.

I am putting my country ahead of myself, however. That is not the greatest consolation for me. My country is made up of all those little choices that men and women like me make, most of us truly trying to make the place both good enough for themselves and a little better for the next group in whatever ways we can, and it lives and dies on our adherence to the qualities of honor that we maintain.

And my country has seen a great deal of dishonor in the past ten years. Dishonor that has come from the top and trickled down effecting everyone, so unlike the economic prosperity of a select few that liars would have us believe will buoy us all, leaving so many of us angry, frightened, and dispirited. I am very, very, very tired of it.

So I am going to put Americans ahead of my principles, the principles I believe that if people like me do not adhere to most days, will lead us to ruin, because the broad enforcement of the rule of law (not just through Justice Stevens, but through the other Federal judges I hope you will appoint) has to come before my strict adhesion to my belief that you do what is right, even if you are going to lose.

I am having to put my faith in you, that you will do what is right. That you will not utterly succumb to power and forget all that we have been through as a nation, but also remember that we are a nation of laws, and it is only through laws that are fair, honest, applying to all, that are in a word, just, that we will be able to address some of the wrongs that we have done. We have to right those wrongs Senator; those wrongs done to the world, those wrongs done to ourselves. It is our responsibility, because we had such a heavy hand in creating that mess.

I don't want to vote on my fears, fears of economic meltdown, fears of government intrusion both private and public into the lives of the American people, fears of tyranny in my own country. So I have to choose to vote on something else.

I am having to vote on faith, and I am asking you to justify that faith, as much as any human can.

Good luck Senator, and may we both find success in our efforts to make this a better world.

Wow.

The money quote

Erick Erickson, editor of the popular conservative megablog RedState, conceded that progressives currently enjoy an advantage over conservatives online—though he attributed it to an asymmetry in free time, since conservatives "have families because we don't abort our kids, and we have jobs because we believe in capitalism."

Just. Floored.