This spring, I was asked by an officer of my county's Democratic Party to organize and head up a team of letter writers for our state's primary campaign, a team that would continue its work supporting the Democratic nominee (as well as Democratic candidates in downticket races) this fall during the general election campaign.

Necessary to this task was the creation of a primer for the aspiring letter writer, some ground rules for the uninitiated, which follow after the break.

I'm not expecting many readers, and without guilt you may back-click to the diary list if uninterested. My intention in posting this is to benefit DK readers wishing to become more active in writing letters to the editor, or interested in heading up letter writing teams.

Or, perhaps the link to this diary could simply be passed along to those friends and relatives we all have who we've heard at one time or another to say: I've always thought about writing a letter. Here goes:

It is worth remembering during this week concluded by an Independence Day holiday weekend that as Americans we are united by freedom, perhaps even as many freedoms as there are of us. That is both the ideal and the reality of America, that each one of us enjoys a freedom all our own, to defend through participation, or allow abrogated through indifference.

The Declaration of Independence that we ostensibly honor this week with cookouts and fireworks displays was quite clear about this, about the influence that common men should have over their own lives.

Two hundred and thirty-two years later this remains the true genius of America, that our freedom as citizens comes first from our belief in it.

It must be known first that I am a pediatrician. I practice in a blue-collar community in Oregon, and I enjoy a richly diverse mix of patient families liberal and conservative, religious and secular, urban and rural, and from all colors of the human rainbow.

Thirty percent of my practice lives in poverty or near-poverty, and qualifies for Medicaid (in Oregon, the Oregon Health Plan) and for the Women, Infants, & Children (WIC) program. Most of the remainder of my practice is solidly middle-class, though within my practice I have several obscenely wealthy families.

It is about one of these families, about a parent of this family, that I write today.

To those who have over the past two days written on, or read about, the findings released on Tuesday by WorldPublicOpinion.org, which revealed that Americans were among the most accepting citizens of the practice of torture for suspected terrorists, my sincere apologies.

For you, there may be nothing to see here, and you are forgiven for clicking the back arrow.

As for me, my thoughts on this poll flitted about my brain last night like moths to a porch light. They would not settle their buzzing until I borrowed time from my sleep to record them.

Haven’t we heard all this before? The dire warnings? The talk of "regime change"? The leaked intelligence reports about nuclear weapons programs, and of threats to our country and our forces? The vice president threatening "monumental consequences"? The "madman" in the Middle East who threatens our very way of life.

And now, as we learned from Emperor Hadrian's diary from late last night, CBS News is reporting that Israel and the Bush administration are in discussions over potential air strikes on Iran.

We should make no mistake. For in fact the past several years, the posture, policy, and propaganda of the Bush administration has been (mis)leading our nation dangerously closer to a ruinously self-defeating conflict with Iran, a conflict that will have grave consequences for the Middle East, the United States and the world.

And once again, everyone has been busily pretending that it is not happening.

Here we go again.

As custom during every election season since that terrible September day nearly seven years ago, Republicans would have Americans be terrorized by the politics of fear.

By now we know the script, and know it well – we should not be surprised that it be followed again.

What does John McCain’s voting record, and what do his public statements, suggest about his views on women and families? It’s a pretty lengthy, damning, and devastating list...

That I am white must be understood if my words that follow are to be of any matter.

That I am white, and old enough to remember a boyhood spent in a small Midwestern town like so many others back then in which a love of God and guns was surpassed only by a dislike of colors other than my own, must be understood if what I am to say next is to have any meaning.

I voted and will do so again for Senator Barack Obama.

One of the things that I love about this site is the freedom enjoyed by each and all to express our opinions, to hang them out for all to see, and for all to admire or borrow or beg to differ as seen fit.

I also love that here I become wiser the longer I linger, from reading the comments and posts of many much wiser than I.

And then there are the times when I become wiser as a result of being proven wrong. One week ago, I wrote a diary spelling out why I felt that, despite everything, history would, in the end, still see Hillary Clinton favorably.

My, my, the difference a week can make.

Before you fire up your flamethrowers and launch invectives at me, hear me out – please.

I am an unflinching Obama supporter. I have written any number of pro-Obama diaries here (this one made the rec list in late March). I have also written a few respectful (I think) diaries opposing Senator Clinton’s candidacy (such as this recent one one, which listed fifteen reasons opposing the notion of Clinton as Obama’s choice for vice-president).

I have phone-banked for Obama, registered voters for Obama, and walked the neighborhood for Obama. I have written and had published letters to the editor and OpEds for local and regional newspapers on behalf of Obama. I even had the pleasure and good fortune to meet and exchange words with the Senator one week ago today – an honor I will carry with gladness until my days are done.

My Obama credentials are solid.

Ten years ago this coming Tuesday, on May 20th, 1998, fifteen year-old Kipland "Kip" Kinkel killed his parents.

The next morning, at 7:55 a.m., he arrived at Thurston High School in Springfield, Oregon carrying three weapons – a .22 caliber semi-automatic rifle, a .22 caliber handgun, and a 9mm Glock semi-automatic pistol. As he walked down the school’s hallway heading towards the cafeteria he shot Ben Walker and Ryan Atteberry.

When he reached the cafeteria, where as many as 400 students were gathered, he calmly emptied out the remainder of the fifty-round clip from the handgun and one round from the pistol. By the time Kinkel was wrestled to the ground by five classmates, one of whom had been shot, one student was dead – Mikael Nickolauson, who had just days before enlisted in the Oregon National Guard – and twenty-five others were wounded.

Just nine minutes after arriving at school, Kinkel was placed into custody. Another student – Ben Walker – would die of his wounds later that morning.

Having written my fair share of political diaries of late, today, Sunday, seems the day to post something a little different, something outside of the political box. The kind gift of your precious minutes in reading will make me glad, and I hope that my words will return the favor.

I am to give a commencement speech at a local high school later this month. I was asked to keep it short, inspirational, and relatively apolitical (my community knows me too well). What follows is my best effort.

If after you read this you feel so inclined to leave a tip, I thank you now. If you know someone who is graduating from high school or college this month or next and feel so inclined to pass this on to them, I thank you again. And if you wish to leave a constructive comment on how I might improve this, I would be grateful for advice.

When, years from now, hindsight-benefited historians look back on the primary elections of 2008, especially during the weeks in April and early May, one thing will appear crystal clear: flag lapel pins didn’t matter.

Nor did bowling scores, nor renegade reverends, nor harsh adjectives used to describe the mood of small-town Americans harshly abandoned by big corporations, and the big government that served them.

No, flag lapel pins did not matter to voters, who agreed with and voted for the man who was not afraid to campaign in the patriotic nude, the man who eschewed the venerable American flag pin in favor of letting his words and deeds demonstrate his patriotism, rather than a two-cent chunk of recycled Chinese metal with a fresh paint job.

There have been moments, many moments, during this campaign when I have been angered by the words or actions of Senator Hillary Clinton or one of her surrogates.

Nevertheless, over the preceding months, both on this site and when talking in person to hundreds of friends and neighbors and strangers I have held my tongue, selected my words carefully and sometimes imperfectly, and have thus far successfully avoided resorting to derogatory or sophomoric language to describe Mrs. Clinton.

Such language is not only not in my nature and training as a physician, as someone who has learned over time to carefully choose words that might have the greatest impact. Such language, I felt, was necessarily avoided if I was, in every political encounter, to be a representative of Senator Obama, and the type of campaign he is waging.

That is not to say it has been easy.

The McCain-Clinton proposal for a summer-long gas tax holiday (never mind that the White House’s current occupant – remember him? – would never sign-off on such a plan) is yet another example of how during political campaigns issues of great national urgency are overlooked in favor of political theatrics and expedient nonsense.

On this issue, thank heavens for Barack Obama’s principled stand.

Nevertheless, that my fellow citizens might be so embarrassingly gullible as to have their votes bought for the equivalent of at most a half a tank of gas has got me to thinking: what other obvious panders might buy my vote?

*THURSDAY NIGHT IS HEALTH CARE CHANGE NIGHT, a weekly Daily Kos Health Care Series*

Today in this country one out of every five meals eaten by children is a fast food meal. Combine this with the knowledge that American children spend an average of almost five hours each day in front of some sort of screen, and it should come as no surprise that the percentage of overweight and obese children has tripled in just the past twenty-five years.

Roughly one-third of American children are now overweight or obese. Minority children, and children from poor households, are even more likely to tip the scales. Today’s generation of children is facing the likelihood of being the first in modern history to live shorter life spans than their parent’s. This is nothing less than a national tragedy in slow motion.

Once rare in children, one-fourth of new cases of type 2 diabetes are now diagnosed under age 21. Of children born in 2000, one in three are expected to develop diabetes during their lifetime; nearly one in two if a person of color. What are we doing to our children?

More than a month on from giving in Philadelphia his powerful and frank speech on religion and race in America – a speech in which Mr. Obama invited Americans of all hues to look up from the stale rhetoric that calcifies the nation’s coded conversations about race, and set their sights higher – the rhetorical highlight of his speech remains unrealized in the nation’s collective mind, and in the minds of many of his supporters.

"Not this time", he urged us to think, remember, say. Not this time will Americans of every color be distracted from working together to address our collective and color-blind problems. Not this time in a time of wars, economic crises, and looming environmental catastrophes will we allow ourselves to be mesmerized by trivial scandals masquerading as news.

"Not this time." This was the highlight. This was the whole point. This was Obama reasserting what his candidacy is all about: that it’s past time we look beyond our own personal interests and grievances to see our common problems, and create a common future worthy of the ideals upon which this country was founded.

Dear Senator Obama,

Congratulations on your splendid achievements thus far in this campaign. You are the presumptive nominee, and for that America should be glad.

You are correct when you say that one year ago precious few thought you’d be where you are today. And I believe I am correct when I say that one year from now you will be charting a new course for our nation from the desk of the Oval Office.

Certainly there were moments, many moments, when you doubted you would ever make it this far. But you kept going, step by step, and stop by stop, and here you are. Sometimes that is all you can do in life, is to put one step in front of the other, to move on from one moment to the next. In doing so, you will always come to a new day, no matter your darkest hours.