In the last couple days, there have been several posts across the blogosphere citing what various candidates running for Congress have said on FISA and retroactive immunity for the telecoms.  But so far, it's been all over the map.  I'll try to corral all their statements into this diary, so you can see who the "good guys" are.

First, let's start off with the current House and Senate members who voted against this bill.  They do deserve credit, as it's their jobs on the line.

Follow me below the fold to see the dozens of Democratic challengers who are standing up for the Constitution, and are against this FISA bill and retroactive immunity.

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This past weekend I traveled to Chicago for the national Yearly Kos convention, and I was really impressed by the amount of energy I saw in all the bloggers, activists, and candidates. I was glad to see folks from local New York blogs like The Albany Project, Rochester Turning, and WNYMedia. I also met with national bloggers from Firedoglake and MyDD as well as DailyKos founder Markos, and Simon Rosenberg from NDN who gave a great talk about the momentum building up towards a Democratic victory in 2008. It was nice to put some faces to names.

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Howie Klein has a great post on downwithtyranny.com about a new plan by the Bush administration to use the word "leaving" while continuing the same failed policies that have created the mess we're in today.

The Bush Regime's chief of ideological purity, bathtub boy Grover Norquist, is asking Bush to just throw in the word "leaving" now and then to confuse the kind of people who watch Fox-TV (the GOP base) "The one-paragraph explanation of what we're doing in Iraq has to have the word `leaving' in there," said Norquist. "If Bush would move to `leaving,' then other people, including the MoveOn.org people and the [Democrats], move to a more extreme position than you have, because they have put themselves in the anti-Bush position."

We owe our troops more than just lip service. As our troops have a sworn duty to defend our country, we have a duties to them.

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There are only a few times in my life that I have been so overcome by emotion. On the night I crossed from Iraq back into Kuwait, as we convoyed out of the war zone, my friends and I circled around celebrating our survival of the most difficult 14 plus months of our lives. That night I was overcome by relief.

On Sunday afternoon as my cousin John Baldwin crossed the finish line of the Ford Ironman Triathlon in Lake Placid, NY, I was again overcome by emotion. As our red t-shirt clad clan converged on the man who just completed a grueling 140 mile course you could feel the overwhelming pride, joy, and inspiration that each of us shared for John.

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Post by John Baldwin, Race for War Kids competitor

It's been a couple of weeks since I first wrote about my training for the Race for War Kids. I'm competing in an Ironman triathlon to help raise money for War Kids Relief, an organization that helps give Iraq's war kids options besides recruitment by terrorists and extremist groups. War Kids Relief provides education, training, employment and other programs to Iraq's kids. Well, the race is getting close. Tomorrow, the family and I leave for Lake Placid.

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