By Brad Friedman on 7/6/2005, 12:15pm PT  

We've said it before...and say it almost everytime we speak anywhere publicly in fact...but if you need any more proof that the actions of one person can make a difference, allow us to offer just a few more recent examples of the actions taken by just a few of the good BRAD BLOGGERS out there.

We're sure we could offer loads of similar examples from several score more of you, but these two folks have jumped out of late and we're happy to add to the noise they've already made.

Last week, a frequent BRAD BLOG commenter (whose name we'll leave out, since we didn't get express permission to mention it --- they can take credit for here in comments if they are so inclined) made a bit of news after sending a letter of complaint to the Tennessee Department of Health complaining about Sen. Bill Frist's videotaped (and incorrect) "diagnosis" of Terri Schiavo a few months back.

The letter, apparently, has triggered a review of Frist's actions, according to the return letter received from the Director of Investigations for Health Related Boards.

All we can say is: Well done!

And another BRAD BLOG commenter, Sheila Leavitt, has been bravely making noise for quite a while. She seems to have little fear when it comes to speaking out rather publicly and for that alone (sadly enough) she deserves a round of applause in this chilling day and age.

That's her on the right as photographed by AFP on the day Conyers was delivering the Downing Street letter to the White House.

Today, Sheila made the news again as she was featured in a great Boston Herald column.

We're not certain, but it may be her car that caught the attention of the Herald reporter :-)

In an email exchange we had today, Sheila told us, "My medium is cardboard, just as yours is words in the computer. Each of us only needs to do what we do best, and do it with love and persistence, don't you think? Eventually, maybe things will get better."

Yes, we think maybe eventually it will.

Since the Herald site is subscription only, here's a few more grafs than usual from today's article on Sheila, some of the thugs she's faced down in the course of bravely speaking out, and, of course...a must-see EXCLUSIVE BRAD BLOG photograph of...Sheila's car...

You could call Sheila Leavitt a nutty, annoying, unrelenting Newton leftie who home-schools the kids and raises chickens to share eggs with neighbors, not to eat. She is, of course, a vegetarian.

I see her as one of those rare people who puts their convictions on parade, then faces uneasy consequences. Like the beefy, mad, middle-aged guy who followed her around the Esplanade yesterday, before dawn, tearing down her "Impeach Bush"' posters as fast as she put them up. Or the trucker she said rear-ended her at a Mass Pike toll booth, sending her head into the steering wheel of her '88 Toyota Corolla with bumper stickers saying "War is barbaric'' and "Support our troops...Draft Jenna & Barbara," as in Bush.
...
Well, you should've seen Sheila Leavitt's in-your-face Toyota yesterday as this 54-year-old trained physician and mother of four in sundress and flip-flops did her "one-person protest parade" through the Back Bay and South End.

She'd spray-painted the car black like a hearse. On its roof, a cardboard Uncle Sam lay in state atop a black-and-white-painted cardboard coffin. "Fake Elections. Fake President. Real Lies. Real War," the coffin read. "Got Kids?" read another sign. "I want yours for cannon fodder." And another, the Lily Tomlin quote: "No matter how cynical I get, I just can't keep up."
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"I like the car," said Jack Davis, 38, passing by it yesterday. "Why are all these young kids going over there to a war we can't win?"
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Leavitt apparently is a once-regular suburbanite who's been radicalized and can't just go quietly anymore. She's thought Bush should be impeached since the war began. "He lied about it."
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Now she's convinced GOP operatives stole the election and that the press has ignored it.

I think she's wrong, by the way - about the press, and Bush stealing the election and lying. To me, he heard what he wanted to hear, and then botched things big-time. Yet some new polls put me in the minority, Leavitt in the majority, though she's the first middle-age mother I've seen willing to drive around town making a spectacle of her ire.

"I can't understand why everybody doesn't, why they're just sitting on their butts watching fireworks," she said as four jet fighters zoomed by over head. "My God, real people are being blown up."

So Sheila Leavitt made yet another sign just for the fireworks set. "July 4, 2005, as we watch from our chairs Bush's Bombs bursting in air, should we feel patriotic, or merely psychotic?"

And now, as promised...Sheila's now-infamous car...


Sheila gave us a few more details today, "On either end of the coffin it says 'Impeach Bush'; on the top of Sam's hat it says 'After Downing Street?'. The graph on the Sam-Mobile's flank is from the Mitofsky report analysis by Josh Mittledorf et al."

And, if I'm not mistaken, I believe Sheila told us some months ago that The BRAD BLOG was mentioned somewhere on the vehicle as well. Don't know if it's still there or not. Or if our mind is even more clouded with delusional grandeur than usual. But either way, we couldn't be prouder!

Those letters, those emails, those protest signs...they all make a difference!

Keep making noise out there! This democracy is not going to save itself! But, of course, many of you already knew that!

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