Best and Brightest

With all the humility proper to my low estate, i hold our elected representatives in the highest esteem, vested as they are with the responsibility and nearly divine burden of shaping the texture of our lives with their decisions of public policy. Did i say nearly divine? Surely an understatement, since they so readily assume power over human life itself.

On that note, i just contacted my representatives in Congress via www.senate.gov and www.house.gov, to let them know that, in my humble opinion, funding embryonic stem cell research was going too far. (See my previous post below.) These websites let me navigate to a particular senator or representative, for example feingold.senate.gov/contact_opinion.html to contact my senator Russ Feingold. Then, using that form, i can generate an email directed to the senator. Certain fields must first be filled in with my name, address, email address, etc., both to verify that i am a real constituent and to make responses. If i don't supply the required fields, no message is generated. Fair enough. I filled in all those fields, and sent my email.

Not surprisingly, i soon received an email from Senator Feingold in response, sent to the email address i had supplied. The text read, in part,

Thank you for taking the time to e-mail me... If you did not include an e-mail and mailing address, I encourage you to resend your original message... No kidding; it really said that. Or, as Dave Barry would say, I'm not making this up!