If safeguarding women from violent batterers is not important enough for our Congress to act, then I ask you, what in blazes IS more important?! Even focusing on DeLay and his greedy money-laundering crimes does *not* take precedence over protecting women from wife-beating. Not in my book.

The NOW website tells us to write or call our Senators. I believe it is high time that we forget all about being polite now, don't you? Quite frankly, I'm sick and tired of being submissive and subservient and asking Congress to please, please do their jobs. I am done with playing "nice" and living by the rules and asking Congress politely to keep women safe. Good lord, it is now A-OKAY to beat women in America and our Senators apparently don't even care.

Tell me, please. What the hell has happened to America?

Let us not forget for even one moment that these Senators are our own public servants, that our hard work is what pays their salaries and we are ALLOWING THEM, by not having protective laws on the books, to condone domestic violence against women.

Angry as hell? YOU BET I AM!!!

There have been so many news stories about horrendous atrocities and crimes committed against our fellow citizens (and humanity in general) lately that I have to admit honestly that I missed this issue. It is admittedly hard to keep on top of ALL the dirt and slime that is going on with regard to our very busy criminals in the federal government.

Folks, time to wake up and read the writing on the wall. It is no mere "accident" that this domestic violence legislation was allowed to expire without being passed. Military spending bills are never allowed to expire, are they? No. Always time to fund legislation that gives more billions in order to bomb yet another innocent Iraqi household.

Let's face facts and tell it like it is. This nation is being "led" by nasty Neanderthals in designer suits wearing tiny American flag and crucifix cross pins. Scary shit, isn't it?

Allowing this important legislation to expire is all about women who have been battered, kicked, pushed, shoved, burned, belted, and raped. And speaking as a woman who's been smacked around more times than I care to recall, I'm here to tell you, this IS important. We don't have a federal law on the books that protects women against domestic batterers. Violence against women is equally as okay in the US as it is against innocent Afghani and Iraqi citizens.

Wife Batterers of America, you have Congress to thank, with your American tax dollars hard at work for this very "equal" opportunity to rape, injure, torture, and commit other violent acts, both at home and abroad.

Friends, I don't want to tell anyone else what to do, but I sure as hell am telling you now what I am going to do at 9:00 a.m. At that precise moment when the office opens, I am going to place a call to NOW in DC and advise them that we need EMERGENCY ACTION consisting of some dramatic massive demonstration at the US Capitol Building in order to show our Senators just *who* is in charge here.

Yes, We, the People, *are* in charge. Or, rather, we need to be. And we must demand laws that protect victims of violence. We want - we *need* - to take our country back to a land of sanity and protection against the innocent under US federal law.

Please join me in moving our nation forward ... not back to a time when it was perfectly acceptable for men to keep the "little woman" in her place by smacking and shoving her around and showing her "who's boss" whenever the hell he felt like it.

Domestic violence is NOT okay in America. And if we, the truly outraged, don't stand up for women's rights? Rest assured, no one else will, either.

Here's the link ~ thank you.

http://www.now.org/issues/violence/100105vawa_alert.html

Cathy Garger

Maryland

The world can only be redeemed through action--movement -- motion. Uncoerced, unbribed and unbought, humanity will move toward the light.

Alice Hubbard's introduction to An American Bible (1912)

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