The most helpful and responsive elected official whom I have contacted is Senator Lugar…..well, his staff I am supposing. Last December I had emailed him about an article on his visit to Russia regarding the START treaty, but mentioned I had not seen any article about the results of his trip. His office sent me a sheaf of press releases, actual concrete statements made by each participant in the talks, etc. Another email I had sent elicited a letter of boilerplate, but within the letter was an answer responding to a particular comment I had made in my email. In September, I had emailed his office to verify that the Senate needed to ratify any treaty a President would sign. I received a franked letter with two one-line paragraphs and one two-lined paragraphs. In the letter was quoted the Constitutional reference that affirmed that to be so. Also, although I had not referred to this in my email, the statement was made that if the President were to sign a treaty in Copenhagen, it would have to be ratified by the Senate [BTW by 67 votes]. In October I had emailed asking about OPM Director John Berry’s letter to Senator Grassley about the ACORN Insitute being eligible for federal personnel donations and wondered about his authority to declare that. This last Monday morning I received a phone message from a staff member in Lugar’s Washington office, and I returned the call. He gave me what info he could, but because he did not have all the info I had garnered, he gave me his email address by which to send him that info to distribute to other Senatorial staff members who deal with OPM issues…..which I did. I am very impressed with the responsiveness of Senator Lugar’s Washington office.

The last time I called Senator Bayh’s office (a couple years ago), it so happened that the staff member was from Fort Wayne and knew exactly where I lived, etc., so she was friendly and it was an okay communication.

Thank you too. Your comments are always most welcome here, as are others.

Okay, most others.

I find the liberals full of vitriol spewing nonsensical garbage can at times add a bit of amusement to the discussion.

And no Charles, I do not lump you in that category.

It appears our follow-up comments collided in hyperspace. Thanks for the compliments.

I shall report back my findings.

My intent was not to upset you at all, truly. But because you are known credible contributor to this blog, most of anything you said would be believed. That’s the power commenter(s) and posters have, given their length of posting.

Please do not be upset as you are right now.

I love Dan’s blog, which is why I come back regularly. And I agree a lot of the time with Dan, though I don’t agree all the time with his political beliefs, his heart is very true, and I respect that the most.

And I will agree that my comment post might have been overly harsh, I am a supporter of Bayh. For this, I apologize, especially is you were the caller.

But Gadlfly, in all seriousness, if you are/were the one to call Bayh’s office, please, get the name of the individual. It is critical. It gives every since of credibility, if we have a name, we can look it up, and decide for ourselves.

Again, I never meant to upset so much, and I apologize if I have.

I’ll personally call Bayh’s office using my covert investigative blogger skills, and report the results back here.

Gadfly is right about Snopes, it’s ran by a husband and wife team that are both liberals, and they have a penchant for twisting the truth. While I do use it to see what they’re saying on some topics, there are quite a few other ways to determine if something is “bullshit.”

Take the Taviano story for example. I was sent several tips, but until I could verify the facts from a reputable source, I had to sit on the story for almost 5 hours, painful as that was. In the end, what I reported, (before anyone else did), turned out to be fact.

It beats tossing out a paragraph of conjecture.

We are also left with the doubt as to whether or not Charles Langley is really Charles Langley which is double hearsay. Now Charles, before you go there, everyone knows that “gadfly” is not my name, but at least my post backtracks to a conservative blog. So Charles, if you do not like Dan’s commentary go elsewhere . . . or start your own blog.

Instead, we not only have hearsay, but double hearsay.

Not very credible. Not to say it’s not true . . . but it does denigrate any argument.