Dear Representative,

As a member of Moveon, I am appalled and outraged that you voted to condemn our newspaper ad about Gen. Petraeus.

The First Amendment says "Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or of the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." While you voted for a resolution rather than a law, your intent was the same: to abridge our freedom of speech. In so doing you betrayed your solemn oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

As for the substance of the ad, Gen. Petraeus' testimony was simply one more effort by the White House to cynically "sell" George Bush's disastrous occupation of Iraq. You and the Democratic class of 2006 were elected to *end* the occupation and bring our troops home; instead you keep giving Bush ever more money to get ever more of our soldiers killed.

In our democracy, no government official is immune from criticism - especially generals who willingly manipulate intelligence to perpetuate a war that was based entirely on manipulated intelligence. Gen. Colin Powell did this in 2003, and Gen. David Petraeus is doing it now.

I therefore demand that you immediately return all campaign contributions from Moveon members like me.

On 9/26/07, the utterly incompetent "Democratic" leaders of the House followed the utterly incompetent "Democratic" leaders of the Senate in voting to condemn Moveon for an ad ... in a newspaper.

The vote was 341-79, with 146 Democrats joining 195 Republicans to stab the progressive Netroots in the back.

The 146 Democrats included several candidates who would not even be in Congress without Netroots support. This petition will go to their campaigns by email. To have the maximum impact, we also encourage you to call their campaigns:

John Hall (NY): ?
Patrick Murphy (PA): (202) 488-1445
Carol Shea-Porter (NH): (603)531-9653
Jerry McNerney (CA): 925 833 0643