DOING THE RIGHT THING

Caroline and Andy Armstrong

        I'm proud of my politically active family members. They are doing the right thing! Several are involved in the Indivisible movement. Others are busily engaged, in all sorts of useful ways. For example, my son and daughter-in-law, Andy and Caroline, as part of Indivisible  have been attending meetings and rallies, tweeting daily, making strategic calls, and writing letters.  Yesterday they shared a letter they had addressed to Congressman Leonard Lance, who represents New Jersey's 7th District. Below is the letter with their covering note. It could serve as a model for others to use in their efforts to hold their local representatives accountable:

Thought you might appreciate this letter, which went out in today’s mail.  Our latest catharsis.  We borrowed some language and the basic format of a brilliant letter written by our friend Pete Jaques to Lance, and took off from there....

February 16, 2017

Dear Representative Lance,

Over the course of the past few months following Mr. Trump’s election, we had been cautiously optimistic that you would be among those in your party who would place reason above ideological extremism; the health, safety and welfare of your constituents above self-serving interests (aka re-election); and stand firm in the protection of our fragile democracy. Sadly, in recent weeks and months your and your party’s actions have been shockingly callous, down-right dangerous, and truly disheartening. They make it perfectly clear that you and the majority of your House colleagues and Republican Senators, as well as the President and his Cabinet appointees, are opposed to the well-being of almost all of the American people and willing to sacrifice our democracy for self-serving interests. To wit:

(1) Your party’s tacit acceptance of Russian ties to and influence on the Trump administration is disturbing, to say the least. To our knowledge, no one in the Republican Party supports a House investigation – one that, incidentally, should be handled by an independent, bipartisan commission. Yet, you and your colleagues supported the FBI’s reopening of Hillary Clinton’s email investigation to ascertain whether any classified information was compromised on her private server. Your silence on this current matter is tacit support for ignoring a far more dangerous and insidious situation than Clinton’s emails.