Barack Obama has declared that small town Americans cling to “guns and religion.”  Belittling the rights protected in our Constitution and mocking the faith that sustains us is something that is just plain wrong. 

Joe Donnelly is a super delegate in the Democratic presidential nominating process.  He is also the one who is supposed to represent Indiana’s 2nd Congressional District.  Yet after receiving $7,500 from Barack Obama’s Political Action Committee, Joe Donnelly has refused to speak up and say that he doesn’t appreciate Barack Obama’s condescending and elitist comments.

The South Bend Tribune has this article about Donnelly’s refusal to condemn Sen. Obama’s inappropriate and revealing remarks.

The Puckett campaign has released this press release asking Joe Donnelly to declare for his constituents and not an ultra liberal presidential nominee. 

Luke spent part of his Saturday last week  down in Indianapolis being interviewed by two of the bloggers who blog at Hoosier Access, one of the state’s leading and fastest growing political blogs.  You can listen to the half-hour interview here.

Many thanks to Josh Gillespie and Mike Jezierski for interviewing Luke.

As part of our ongoing efforts to keep you connected to the campaign we’ve launched a Flickr page to keep you up to date with what the campaign is doing.  We’ve already started posting pictures of Luke and supporters at events and we’ll be post a lot more photos over the course of the campaign. 

Sign up to volunteer today by sending an e-mail with your contact information to Frank Fotia, our Field Director, and if you volunteer you just may see yourself with Luke on the Flickr page!

The Puckett campaign is launching its email efforts today!  Take a moment to head over here to sign up to receive the very latest campaign updates delivered directly to your inbox.  We’ll keep you abrest of the latest news, volunteer opportunities, and campaign stories.

The good folks over at the Circle City Pundit have decided to endorse Luke Puckett in his bid to become the 2nd district’s next Congressman.  This is the first official blog endorsement that the campaign has received and we sincerely appreciate it.

Here is part of the reason they’re endorsing Luke:

“…then I had the chance to meet Luke Puckett a few weeks back, and realized I was supporting the wrong guy (not to mention that Donnelly has turned out to be another of Pelosi’s robots), and so we are officially, for the first (and not likely the last) time doing a u-turn and switching our support to the “other guy”.

Certainly he [Puckett] brings enough depth to represent the people of the 2nd CD well, much better than Donnelly has.

We here at CircleCityPundit.com are proud to font formally endorse Luke Puckett.”

Thanks, guys.  Click here to read the rest of their post.

Bob Novak, a Washington based political reporter, wrote a very revealing article on the recent failure of the House Democratic Majority to permanently bring America’s intelligence gathering laws into the 21st Century.

Apparently the sticking point for some in the Democratic Majority in the House was that trial lawyers were arguing against the bi-partisan Senate passed bill that put in place a long-term fix to the terrorist loophole.  Some trial lawyers have helped bankroll Democratic candidates.  By not working for a real solution to this problem, House Democrats have effectively put the interests of trial lawyers and big donors ahead of the safety of the American people.

Luke Puckett believes that we do not need to advocate for short-term fixes that don’t deal with problems.  As our Congressman, Luke Puckett will stand up for the most important special interest group: The American people.  Often this group is overlooked and under-represented in the offices of K-Street lobbyists.  It’s time for real, common-sense solutions that keep America safe. 

We’ll see how this works out, but right now I’m going to try to do an occasional post with links to websites and blogs that have run articles or posts about our campaign.  The 2.0 version will be for the “new media” or the blogs and other websites that are talking about us.  The 1.0 version will be for the more traditional news media (memo to conventional media folks: Don’t take the 1.0 designation wrong, most folks are still using 1.0 and 2.0 is still growing).

Today we’ve been in two blog posts so far:

Dan Turkette has this piece up on his site Ft. Wayne News.

Yours truly has this piece up on Hoosier Access.

And there is this interesting Facebook page that has started up in support of Luke.

Disclaimer: The appearance of links on this blog does not mean that the campaign endorses every aspect of those sites.

The campaign released this press release today. 

-Brian

Luke Puckett, 2nd District GOP candidate, stared in awe Monday at how fast his congressman caved under pressure from Nancy Pelosi and the liberal Democratic Congress during last week’s Protect America Act debate. Donnelly voted with the Republican leadership Wednesday morning but switched his vote to side with the Democratic leadership that afternoon.

On Tuesday, the Senate passed a bipartisan bill that would permanently extend the Protect America Act by a vote of 68-29.  On Wednesday, House Republicans sought to vote on this same bill.  When House Democrat leaders objected, Republicans forced a vote on considering the bill.  All but five House Democrats voted to block the House from considering a permanent extension of the law.  Joe Donnelly was one of these 5 Democrats. Later that day, Republicans again tried to offer an amendment to pass the Senate bill, yet all but one Democrat voted to prevent the amendment from being voted on. Joe Donnelly was NOT this one Democrat. Shamefully, most the 21 Democrats who sent a letter to Speaker Nancy Pelosi in support of the Senate bill still sided with their liberal leadership on at least one of these two votes, proving that this letter was just a shallow grasp for political cover.

“Either Joe Donnelly’s personal idea of how to protect Hoosiers and our American homeland changed from morning to afternoon, or this is just the latest example of Donnelly telling the folks of the district one thing and doing the exact opposite when he gets to Washington” Puckett says. “Actions speak louder than words, and this particular flip-flop of Donnelly’s is even more alarming because it deals with the future safety of our Hoosier families”.

Prior to enactment of the Protect America Act, wholly international communications transmitted over a wire required a FISA court order.  This requirement has hindered our intelligence community’s ability to collect vital intelligence from terrorists communicating with other foreign intelligence targets located in a foreign country.  It is difficult to compile enough information in a short period of time on a foreign person of interest to satisfy the FISA statute, and this is where the terrorist loophole arises. The protect America Act has been credited for stopping a number of terrorist attacks before they happened.

Democrats have now headed home for a ten day recess with the Protect America Act about to expire.  Despite Democrat claims that there is no harm in that, DNI McConnell wrote in the Washington Post Friday that:

“Without the act in place, vital programs would be plunged into uncertainty and delay, and capabilities would continue to decline. Under the Protect America Act, we obtained valuable insight and understanding, leading to the disruption of planned terrorist attacks. Expiration would lead to the loss of important tools our workforce relies on to discover the locations, intentions and capabilities of terrorists and other foreign intelligence targets abroad.”

Puckett concludes, “How many more terrorist attacks will we have to prevent before Joe Donnelly and the Democratic Congress allow us to permanently extend the Protect America Act?”

On Wednesday, Bob Montgomery of WSBT Radio interviewed Luke Puckett on why he’s running for Congress.

Listen to the interview here.

Download RealPlayer here if you don’t have a media player on your computer.

Here is WNDU TV’s coverage of the South Bend announcement that took place on Tuesday, Feb. 12th.