RazShafer.com

This article was first posted at www.AmericanMajority.org

Oh Twitter, how I love thee. Let me count the ways…

I first became interested in Twitter a bit over a year ago while reading Seth Godin’s book, Tribes (for my full blog review of the book click here). Before I even finished the book I had to log online and get my account set up (@razshafer). Since then it’s been a non-stop ride on the twitter train for over a year. Here I sit, 6248 tweets and 3834 followers later, more fascinated by it than ever!

By this point, I’m sure that most of you have heard about and formed some opinion regarding Debora Medina’s interview on the Glenn Beck program. I’ve personally interacted with a very large number of Medina-ites and knew how excited they were that Medina was to be interviewed on Beck’s program. In my mind it’s more than a little ironic that most of the people I know that favor Medina have been members of the “9/12 Project” which was Glenn Beck’s brainchild…but I digress…

The short story is that Medina was invited onto Glenn Beck’s radio program to be interviewed in regards to her bid for Texas Governor. Her supporters heralded this invitation as a huge win and just the boost that she needed to push her past KBH in the polls…this isn’t quite what happened…

“Nothing is more fatal to health than an over care of it.” - Benjamin Franklin

While it often seems that they have forgotten this crucial fact, our elected representatives work for us: We the People.

In order to hold them accountable and let them know how we want them to vote it is necessary for us to be in contact with our representatives. There are several avenues through which you can contact your legislators and each medium has a most effective means of use.

I spent some time working in DC for my Congressman back in 2007 and in addition to my other duties I worked a great deal with constituent correspondence. During my time there I handled tens of thousands of phone calls, emails, faxes and letters. My congressman’s office was above average in responsiveness to constituents and we worked hard to make sure that every form of contact got a response. However, some letters, faxes, emails and phone calls grabbed our attention more than others. These were the contacts which were most likely to carry weight and get mentioned to the Congressman.

Today I started running my RSS feed through FeedBurner.com in order to better track hits and traffic. This change may affect people who have been subscribers to RazShafer.com in that they need to redirect the feed they are subscribed to. The feed address for my blog is: http://feeds.feedburner.com/razshafer & my podcast feed address is: http://feeds.feedburner.com/razshaferpodcast

Please re-subscribe to these feeds if you’ve been a long-time follower and if you’re new to RazShafer.com then you know where to go!…

This past week I posted on a blog that the following phrase from an article’s comment string had been found amusing:

“I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would, more often than not, reach a better conclusion than a black male who hasn’t lived that life.”

Almost immediately a friend cautioned me not to advertise this saying, fearing that I might be called sexist or even racist. For those of you who have not followed the nomination closely, let me explain: I was not the original author of the quote. The basis comes from an oft-repeated phrase that Supreme Court nominee Sotomayor has used in public speeches and writings. It has only been changed in that the original used “white male” instead of “black male.” I did not even author the switch but merely commented how the change in juxtaposition added force to the idea of her racism. In other words, if she would have said exactly the same thing, but used black male instead of white male, she would have been railroaded out of town rather than given the nomination to the Supreme Court of the United States….

The judicial power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish.

At the nomination hearing of William H. Rehnquist to the Supreme Court, a democratic Senator from Arkansas criticized the labels that were used to define the Court, Congress, the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, and even Rehnquist himself. Such labels, Senator McClellan said, are “the stuff of journalism, not constitutional law.”

I believe such criticism is appropriate for the controversial hearings on the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the United States Supreme Court. There are only three issues regarding any nominee to the highest court which should be of concern. But such issues should be examined with the most careful precision and scrutiny….