Rallying at the local Rep's office,

who does not support Obamacare, we were approached by a lone woman who engaged the small group next to me:
"I can't wait until we have socialized medicine."

Debate ensued. She was somewhat combatitive and not really listening. Neither were the group members who were talking to her, frankly, as all she had were the talking points in her hand, most of which we knew were not true.

Noticing that she had a pronounced accent, someone asked where she was from, originally, and if she was an American citizen. Turned out she was from France and had dual citizenship.
Okay.

If you want an effective counter-protestor, you might want to steer clear of people that can be told "Well, France is that way- don't let the door hit you on the way out!"

Not that we said that.

Our best speaker, Don, asked her why she wanted the plan. I missed part of her answer, because there was supportive honking, but whatever she said made him say, kindly, "Ma'am, you just don't understand Americans. We don't want to be taken care of, most of us. We want the freedom to make our own decisions."

As it becomes clearer every day, we have a lot of elected officials who don't understand Americans, either. Or if they do understand, despise and fear them. Despise them because they don't think the way they 'should' and fear them because they might strip them of their power.

Here are some of our group at the City Hall protest on the 17th. The "Social Security: Bankrupt" sign is one of ours. I didn't get to that one, so haven't had any contact with really organized pro-Plan supporters. They tend to stick to the Town Halls, I think.

Nancy and the Astroturfers
A photo essay linked from the Anchoress. Just doing my bit to spread it around...

Senator Cornyn Asks Why
Americans are being asked to turn in their fellow citizens for exercising their First Amendment rights?

I am not aware of any precedent for a President asking American citizens to report their fellow citizens to the White House for pure political speech that is deemed "fishy" or otherwise inimical to the White House's political interests.
By requesting that citizens send "fishy" emails to the White House, it is inevitable that the names, email addresses, IP addresses, and private speech of U.S. citizens will be reported to the White House. You should not be surprised that these actions taken by your White House staff raise the specter of a data collection program. As Congress debates health care reform and other critical policy matters, citizen engagement must not be chilled by fear of government monitoring the exercise of free speech rights.