My Birthday... Good and Bad

Friday was my birthday... and I had some terrific "presents". For one, some staffers at the Busby for Congress office in Cardiff bought me a b-day cake and threw a little party for me... that would have been enough to make my day, but there was more. Ex-Rep. Duke Cunningham (R- the old guy from CA-50 who took $2.4 million in bribes and plead guilty) got 100 months in jail... and better yet... Francine delivered the Democratic response to Bush's national radio address!!!!
Sadly, there was some bad news as well. The Senate voted to renew most of the (Un)Patriot Act, and Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS) is stonewalling on an Intelligence Committee investigation of the Illegal NSA Wiretaps. The US Supreme Court dismissed the challenge (by a coaltion of law schools) to the Solomon Amendment, which punishes colleges which refuse to allow military recruiting on campus by cutting off federal funds (these law schools countered that the military violates their non-discrimination policies by forbidding openly LGBT people from serving). Of course, another frustrating bit of news is the (near total) abortion ban in South Dakota... if I were a straight girl, I'd be fleeing the state by now! What can I say... the radical right will be pushing as hard as they can to get their disgusting agenda through... even as they begin to lose grasp of power. How sad it is.
Anyways, there is some more good news to cheer us up. For one, Francine and I share the same birthday... so I crashed her party on Friday night. I signed up some more volunteers, I previewed our new TV commercial (which premiered at the Oscars Sunday night!), and I got to talk with Francine for a little while (she is such a terrific gal!). It turns out that we are both originally from Orange County, and I may be in a position to help her once she wins this election (volunteer interns will certainly be needed in the new district office... or should I say she may be in a position to help me ).
In conclusion, I must say this: if you live anywhere near a hotly contested Congressional seat this year (House and/or Senate)... help us! If you are disgusted with continual war on other peoples, war on civil liberties, war on the Constitution, and war on the poor the way I am... then this is your chance to do something! We Dems can actually pull off a "year of change" election the same way the Repugs did in 1994... but we cannot do it without all of our effort and support.