Senator Dorgan’s response to my letter

A while back I wrote to Senators Conrad and Dorgan about their participation in a letter sent to Clear Channel to influence political speech on their stations.

I got a response back from Senator Gaylord Kent Conrad which admitted that he didn’t know the context of Rush Limbaugh’s comments, so apparently he was simply being a good Democrat so he could continue to receive the over 90% of his out-of-state campaign contributions. You can read the post about his response letter here.

I just got my response from Senator Dorgan in the mail. He maintains that Rush Limbaugh was critical of soldiers who disagree with the war…no problem there, we’ll just have to disagree. To his credit, the letter contained the following: “However, in retrospect, I wish we had not started down this road of having the Senate involved in expressing support or opposition to various kinds of speech.” Later on he says, “…I think it would have been better had the Senate not rushed to express itself on either of these issues involving Moveon.org or Rush Limbaugh. Frankly, there will always be people on all sides of controversial issues that say things we might object to, but I think we should not have started down that road.”

While Senator Conrad gave me some sort of nonsense answer and apparently stuck to his guns on the issue, at least Senator Dorgan agrees that the Senators participating in the letter should not have done so. He’s not afraid to say so in a letter to one of his constituents. We’ll just agree to disagree on the intent of the comment on the radio that started it all. I’m fine with that.

Case closed, I suppose. I wish that our state’s Senate delegation had not signed on to the letter in the first place. It seems that only half that delegation can at least own up to it and say it was the wrong thing to do.

Luke Graner at the Walrus

I can’t believe I went to the Walrus and didn’t order a huge plate of pasta! Not only did my wife feed me a hearty meal before I left, but I was also there on a mission: to record Luke Graner’s set during the “Suchy & Friends” night. I brought my MD recorder and decided to take a few photos while rolling.

Obviously I enjoyed the show, even though Luke didn’t play any of my favorites (hint, hint) and the start of a nasty cold that made me want to flop down on a couch somewhere. One of the coolest things I saw through the whole evening (aside from my friend Ellen) was that the drummer was playing a big yellow Samsonite. It worked great as a bass drum, I would have never expected that!

Once Luke’s show was done, I grabbed my gear and went home to that couch and a nice hot Theraflu. I’ll never look at luggage the same way again.