I gave money to a Senator

I don’t blog too much about politics these days because it makes me sad. My congressman voted to repeal Habeas Corpus when his party wasn’t in control of congress and his vote didn’t help them repeal a writ that’s been on the book for almost 1,000 years. Outside of helping my sister understand Bruce Springsteen's rants, there's not much a blogger can do.

Plus, the current congress is a complete do-nothing congress. They are trying to ride a coattail of discontent from voters about the Republicans. It seems they are sitting back and doing nothing on purpose so that things are as bad as possible in 2008. Don’t stop the war and then call it the Republican War in Iraq. Don’t fix the assault on the constitution and call it the republican assault on your freedoms.

The current batch of Presidential contenders are very uninspiring. They debate, and the debates are boring, staged, and silly. The national press attacks democrats for stupid things. Hillary for her laugh. Edwards for a haircut. Obama for a lapel pin. Meanwhile, on the right, one of the leading contenders is another actor who plays the role of good-old boy, even thought he’s a millionaire former lobbyist turned actor.

This week though, I got inspired. Senator, and Presidential Candidate Chris Dodd actually did something. In the on-going FISA scandal, the President is accused of spying on Americans since just after 9.11 with the help of the telecom companies. A federal judge has already ruled that these companies knowingly broke the law. so they went to congress to get retroactive immunity. A decidedly un-American thing.

Anyway, since the Dems don’t seem to want to find out if the President was illegally spying in Americans, a group of lawyers from the Electronic Frontier Foundation sued the telecom companies. This is a good resource to read about it.

Democratic Senator Jay Rockefeller, who personally took immense amounts of money from telecoms, crafted a bill last week that would give the telecom companies retroactive immunity.

And Chris Dodd stopped it. So I gave him $25. And you can too. Go, give him $5. Tell him to stand up for the constitution. Show him that real leadership isn’t saying the stuff you’ll do, but it’s doing something. Maybe Clinton and Obama will get the message. Perhaps Edwards can talk about it (even though he’s not a sitting Senator.)

It's a sad day when you need to reward senators for doing their job. But that's where we are. So reward him.