Getting my mind off a bad break-up and an impending move, I went to the People for the American Way offices and called Nebraskans about the filibuster. Although I now have a sore throat (3 hours when I've been smoking too much lately anyway), it was great! I talked to 16 people, and only one said he wasn't interested in calling Hagel. And only one person hadn't heard about the "nuclear option" -- admittedly, these are PFAW members, but I was still pretty optimistic about that. The one thing I noticed about the telephone script (which, now that I think of it, I should have put on the feedback form), was how goddamn wordy it was. I teach, read my papers at conferences, and used to work a research job where I called people on the phone all the time -- I know that 15 word sentences with multisyllabic words and commas are really hard to get out when you're talking to someone who's dubious of you from the start. So I got a lot of practice talking in my own words. Those of you near a PFAW office, I highly recommend it!