Reid's letter to Democrats:

Dear Friend,

Republicans want to go "nuclear" and turn the Senate into a rubber stamp for President Bush. They want to silence Senate Democrats - the one remaining check on President Bush's power. If they can do away with debate in the Senate, they can get whatever they want - right-wing Supreme Court Justices, Social Security privatization and tax breaks for the wealthy that will plunge us deeper in debt.

But Senate Democrats are going to fight them every step of the way. And this fight will be different than any other fight in the history of the Senate - because it will include all of us. Senate Democrats need our help, and that is why they are using your names and comments as part of our debate on the floor of the United State Senate. Imagine all of us standing together in the Senate Chamber during this debate.

Stand with Senate Democrats today . I did and you should too:

http://democrats.senate.gov/filibuster-form.cfm

Everyone in the country should listen to this weeks "This American Life" on NPR.  It is about what it is really like for soldiers in Iraq.  First they talked about the National Guard, then the Marines.  It's just straight up reporting telling the story of these men.  A 40-some year old Baptist minister who was involuntarily re-upped, suffered a debilitating injury, and lost his church while he was away.  The commander who after losing one of his soldiers on their first day in Iraq can't keep his voice from cracking as he says, "it's not worth it."  
This american life is always great.  But today it is amazing.  
http://www.thislife.org/

An old friend of mine voted for Bush.  She is a republican and was undecided for a while but ultimately went with W.  She hasn't told me this, she is smart enough to not do that, but I know she voted for him, and I know her reasons were that she just wasn't sure she could trust John Kerry, and that she was worried it would take a new administration too long to get up to speed and run the war in Iraq and that she didn't really believe that they would be able to overturn Roe v. Wade, or do anything else all that bad. She's Catholic, we wore kits together in grade school, but pro-choice and socially liberal.

Yesterday she emailed me asking me if I had recovered from the election yet and I am wondering if it is cruel or unkind of me to write back to her, pretending I don't know who she voted for, and say the following:

President Bush nominated Alberto R.Gonzales, who he said today had been "a calm and steady voice in times of crisis."
Ok, not surprisingly I suppose, it seems that W and I have a very different definition of calm and steady.  I think it means not throwing out decades long ideas of how to treat prisoners just because terrorists attacked us here at home.   He thinks it means deciding to render the Geneva Convention "obsolete" and torture people to get information because it would make us more "flexible" in fighting his War on Terror.
This is the man you choose to be our Attorney General?!?!  This man who wrote the infamous torture memos?  The man whose actions may have lead to the Abu Ghraib scandal or to abuse of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay? Does that mean soon it will be ok to torture suspects in America? I am sure there are a few cops here who'd enjoy some flexibility.
There could be no nominee who would be a worse slap in the face to the rest of the world, not to mention the blue states.