Here's my letter, submitted to the Jacksonville Daily News.

*****

On August 8th, Jacksonville was visited by a representative from Senator Dole’s Eastern North Carolina office. The press release and a small, one day blurb in the Daily News noted that “Constituents can use the office hours to hold individual meetings to discuss their concerns with federal agencies, case work or issues pending before Congress.”

I thought, wrongly, that meant the representative would be able to answer questions. However, the representative, Ms. Janet Bradbury, who was quite polite, was not able to answer any questions. In fact, she didn’t even read my questions (being the entrepreneurial fellow I am, I printed off two copies). For the record, my questions were basic questions on the Senator’s positions on many of the political topics of the day.

For those of you who think we should keep anonymous comments because it preserves anonymity. Think again. Sure, maybe I can't go online and figure out who you are, but the people who own your computer, computer hookup, IP server, and search engine can. From today's NYT.

Buried in a list of 20 million Web search queries collected by AOL and recently released on the Internet is user No. 4417749. The number was assigned by the company to protect the searcher’s anonymity, but it was not much of a shield.

Ethanol will be highly toughted [sic] by uninformed greenies.

Link. The only people I hear pushing ethanol are big auto makers and anyone stumping in Iowa. Just remember this the next time this particular winger claims to have some insight on the liberal mind. Chances are that he's never met one.

Imagine that: John Hood, Stagemanager at the John Locke Puppetshow, writes a whole column today about the Starling-LaRoque debacle in NC House District 10 - and not once mentions his boss's role in influencing the outcome of the election. Nary a peep.

I didn’t hear the attorneys for LaRoque and Starling make the case before the elections board, so perhaps I have missed a critical argument or piece of information that would change my mind. But at first glance it appears that a do-over is the right choice. To allow Starling to claim victory by a margin of only seven votes, with more than that many voters complaining about how elections officials ran the balloting, would not have been in the public interest.