Senator Jeff Sessions is Responding

It must be one of the wonders of the election season. Jeff Sessions has been responding to my letters. They are even on topic, although full of Bush talking points. Could he actually be worried about his upcoming election?

Now if I could just get him to answer a few of my questions.

- How is it pro-life to vote against SCHIP?

- How can he accept government-run health care, but deny it to the rest of us?

- Why is amnesty great for big telecom companies, but bad for illegal immigrants?

- How can he say he supports the troops if he votes down funding just because it asks the president to try to bring the troops home? How can he vote against giving soldiers time off between deployments?

Where do your reps stand on Iran?

I sent the following letter to my reps.

Does President Bush have the authority to attack Iran?

If he does it anyway, what can Congress do? What will Congress do?

Maybe ya'll should try listening to some of the people that have turned out to be right about Iraq. When someone consistently turns out to be wrong, you need to stop taking his advice.

It's been over a month, and this is how they replied.

Senator Richard Shelby - He sent me a very nice letter by snail mail. It's full of talking points about how dangerous Iran is, but no answers to my questions.

Representative Jo Bonner - Nothing but an auto response.

Senator Jeff Sessions - I might as well ask a rock. He's still not talking.

Hello Congressional Lurkers

Senator Richard Shelby, Senator Jeff Sessions, Representative Jo Bonner. This seems to have caught the attention of your notification service on my last post, so I'll try it again.

Just what do you people spend your day doing? As nice as it is to be heard for a change, how much time do ya'll spend reading obscure little blogs like this one? What made this especially amusing is the topic of my last post. I was commenting on how unresponsive some representatives are. So what happens? Congressional staffers spend time lurking, and don't even respond.

You don't spend much time reading the bills that you are voting on. All that pork gets slipped in somehow. Did you notice the military access to school records requirement in the No Child Left Behind bill? How about those back door US attorney appointments in the latest Patriot Act? And now you're thinking that maybe we should have kept Habeas Corpus when we made torture legal.

You don't spend much time writing bills either. Why bother when someone from the group being regulated is willing to write them for you? No charge.

You have been known to spend time on petty activities such as trashing Wikipedia entries for your fellow congress people.

Sounds like a great job. It even includes health care. Where do I apply?

The Senator Jeff Sessions Response Challenge

I don't expect a response to every form letter that I send to my reps, but if I go to the trouble of composing a letter, it's nice to know that someone read it. My senators and representative seem to have a different opinion.

Senator Richard Shelby is the most responsive of the lot. He's very good with the email acknowledgement, and he usually follows up with a letter by snail mail. The letter is mostly talking points, but it is on topic. He doesn't always answer. I'm still waiting for a response to my question of whether he is American first and Republican second, or vice versa. All the same, if there are applicable talking points, he does reply.

Representative Jo Bonner has a working auto response on his web site. Once or twice, he even followed up with a detailed response, even if it was nothing but talking points.

Senator Jeff Sessions is in a world unto himself. As best as I can tell, his in box goes straight to the great bit bucket in the sky. Not a single peep from him.

Which leads me to my challenge, what does it take to get a response from a mute representative? I've named the challenge in honor of my own resolute Senator, but I'm interested in hearing what has worked, or not worked, with any other non-responder.

Shelby, Sessions, and Bonner are in favor of torture

Actually only Senator Shelby is willing to admit to it. Senator Sessions and Representative Bonner can’t even trouble themselves to respond to my letters. It seems like a pretty safe assumption though.

It’s frustrating when all of your reps are hard-core Bush puppets, but I thought I found something that might get through to them about why torture is such a bad idea. I sent a copy of an article written by a reserve soldier who fought in the first Iraq War, entitled What We’ve Lost. He writes about all the American soldiers that didn’t die because we had a reputation for treating prisoners fairly.

http://time.blogs.com/daily_dish/2006/09/what_weve_lost.html

This is Senator Shelby’s response.

Thank you for contacting me about methods for interrogating and trying enemy combatants. I appreciate you views on this matter.

I do not support the use of cruel, inhumane or degrading punishment against those in United States custody. However, these are not ordinary times. It is important to keep in mind that we must be able to obtain critical information from terrorists. Such information is vital to the security of our nation. Tough interrogation of ruthless terrorists is a necessity. We must never forget that terrorists do not follow the rules of engagement or the rules of the Geneva Convention.

On June 29, 2006, the Supreme Court ruled in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld that President Bush had overstepped his authority in ordering military war crimes trials for Guantanamo Bay detainees. As a result, Congress has moved forward on legislation to define the treatment of detainees during interrogations and create military commissions to prosecute terrorist suspects.

In September 2006, Congress passed S. 3930, the “Military Commissions Act,” which authorizes trial by military commission for violations of the law of war. Pursuant to S. 3930, the War Crimes Act of 1996 criminalizes only those Common Article 3 violations labeled as “grave breaches.” Previously, any violation of Common Article 3 constituted a criminal offense under the War Crimes Act.

This agreement is an important step forward. It maintains our ability to obtain important intelligence from captured terrorists while being mindful that we are not engaged in a conventional war.

Thank you again for sharing your views. If I may be of future assistance, please do not hesitate to contact me.

I especially noticed the paragraph that starts with him not supporting torture, and ends with him in favor of torture. The only way to fight the terrorists is to become them. How can anyone be so dense?