Sisterhood Is....Regional?
I was happy to see the only woman on the Senate Judiciary Committee vote against the nomination of John Roberts, so I sent her this e-mail:
Dear Senator Feinstein,
Thank you for voting against the nomination of John Roberts to the Supreme Court, as I believe women have a lot to fear from him. You may not technically be "my Senator" but you do a far better job of representing me in Congress than the Senators from South Carolina, and I wanted to let you know how much I appreciate this.
Warmest Regards,
Ann Bartow
And here is the response I received:
"Thank you for sending me your electronic mail message. I appreciate your taking the time to share your thoughts with me.
"Because of the volume of email that is received by my office, we can only respond to email that includes a California postal address. Please resend the text of your email message, including your postal address, and I will respond to you as soon as possible.
"Should you need additional information about the Congress, or my Offices in Washington and California, please visit my homepage on the World Wide Web. The address is http://feinstein.senate.gov.
"Thank you again for contacting me, and I hope you will continue to do so in the future."
Sincerely,
Dianne Feinstein
United States Senator
And then there was this response to a similar e-mail I sent to Hillary Clinton based on her statements that she would vote against Roberts:
"Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts and concerns with me via e-mail. I hope you will understand that, because of the volume of e-mails I receive from residents of New York State, I cannot at this time respond to messages received from residents of other states. I encourage you to contact your U.S. senators if you have an issue or concern that needs immediate attention. You can access your senators electronically by visiting http://www.senate.gov/contacting/index_by_state.cfm for a listing of their contact information. If you are still interested in learning more about the work I am doing on behalf of New York State, I hope you will continue to monitor my work through my website at http://clinton.senate.gov."
Oh, I know how to contact the Senators from South Carolina; I just don't want to thank them for anything much at the moment. UPDATE: Especially not this.