by David Dayen [courtesy of Calitics - Front Page]

by Julia Rosen [courtesy of Calitics - Front Page]

(also up at Daily Kos.  full disclosure: I work for Courage)

Bradley Whitford, better known to many of you as Josh Lyman on The West Wing, took time out of filming a movie in Calgary to shoot this video for the Courage Campaign on the importance of opposing retroactive immunity for telecom companies.  Go watch the video and then do as he says, call your Senators.

Telecom immunity is scheduled to be brought up this week, last I heard Thursday.  It is extremely important that all of our Senators hear from us and hold the line against retroactive immunity.

Senator Dodd has promised to filibuster any bill that lets the phone companies off the hook for passing on our private information to the government without a warrant.  But we need 41 votes to sustain the filibuster and we need your help to get us there.

Here are Senator Feinstein's phone numbers.  Report back on your call here.

202-224-3841 (Washington, DC)

310-914-7300 (Los Angeles)

by Monica Smith [courtesy of Blog for America]

Senator Dodd's focus on how our Constitution, the framework of our government, has been eroded during the administration of George W. Bush has been a constant theme and, indeed, one of the prime motives for his candidacy.

While the video of the speech to the Iowa City Council on Foreign Relations runs to 48 minutes and takes a long time to load, even on high speed broad band, Dodd's speech is only seventeen minutes. It is, however, full of references to a number of individuals who have been on the front lines, protecting the Constitution, whose efforts probably deserve even more attention. So, I'll try to provide a few links.

by Julia Rosen [courtesy of Calitics - Front Page]

by Sheri Divers [courtesy of Blog for America]

by Brian Leubitz [courtesy of Calitics: Soapblox California - Front Page]

Senator Chris Dodd sat down with several California bloggers to talk about the issues. In an extended interview he talked about the attention gap between the "first tier" and others. The media's limited focus seems to be ignoring the impressive Democratic Senator from Connecticut, but Sen. Dodd seems to be taking it in stride and working to get his name out there.

The interview then continues on to Iraq, where he believes that we cannot send any bill to W that does not have restrictions on time. His bill to restore habeus corpus seems to be meeting tough resistance in the Senate despite its strong support from citizen co-sponsors.

Later, Senator Dodd discusses why people are falling behind. He notes the decreasing number of union households and the failure of health care system to properly treat everybody in the country. He also addressed something that is important to me, the predatory lending and usury fees of check-cashers and payday loan operations.

by Tim Tagaris [courtesy of Calitics: Soapblox California - Front Page]

Hey folks,

Just wanted to send a quick shout out to those of you who attended the meeting Senator Dodd had with the California bloggers.  I am so gratified that it happened.  A special note of thanks to Dday for his write-up of the occassion.

It's tough breaking through the traditional media filter at times.  When the first AP story after the debate came out, Senator Dodd was afforded a two word quote about President Bush's "failed policy" in Iraq.  "Failed policy" -- those were the two words found in the second to last paragraph of the story.  Hardly a thorough summation of the Senator's position on Iraq when you consider he is the only candidate co-sponsoring Feingold-Reid and the only other besides Governor Richardson to publicly acknowledge his support for the bill.

Anyway, just know that if any of you have follow-up questions for the Senator or just want to know where he stands on what and why, don't hesitate to reach out and ask me.  I'll direct the question through the appropriate channels and get those answers for you as soon as possible.

ttagaris at yahoo dot com is the best way to reach me.

Thanks again, and Brigham tells me there might be video of the exchange -- can't wait to see it.

Tim