Write and call Governor Strickland to urge him to try to keep the Hi-Q factory egg farm out of central Ohio! Tell him you will hold him personally responsible - (614)466-3555. Please use this letter as an example:

The Honorable Ted Strickland
Governor’s Office
Riffe Center, 30th Floor
77 South High Street
Columbus, OH 43215-6108

May 6, 2008

Dear Governor Ted Strickland,

I write on behalf of the over 16,000 members and supporters of Mercy For Animals, an Ohio-based animal protection organization, to ask you to ban the construction of fac- tory farms in the great state of Ohio.
As more people experience the negative effects of factory farms—including land, water and air degradation; decreased property values; the emergence of antibiotic-resistant, more virulent diseases; and the intolerable cruelty inflicted on animals—it is becoming clear that we, as a state, must phase out factory farms. Animal factory farms harm the public and violate the values and ideals of Ohioans.
Mercy For Animals recently released a new, hidden-camera investigation at a battery

"Dad, did you know the governor of Illinois was arrested?"

Well, no. This was last week. I was in Denmark, visiting my daughter, and this was my first news from Crazy Land in a while. It's dangerous to go online when I'm traveling. I learned, among other things, that my governor, Rod Blagojevich, was taped discussing the sale of the president-elect's old Senate seat because it's "a bleeping valuable thing. You just don't give it away."

No way. Not in this economy.

But even though I felt no real surprise at that or anything else I eventually returned home to — flying shoes, collapsing Ponzi schemes, a federal report documenting waste and ineffectiveness in the reconstruction of Iraq (who would have guessed?) — I was nevertheless blindsided by the cumulative effect of the week's news. All it took was a week of expatriate perspective to see how surreal, how nuts, American normal has become.

Sunday morning, before dawn, I read in the New York Times that “the Pentagon is planning to add more than 20,000 troops to Afghanistan” within the next 18 months -- “raising American force levels to about 58,000” in that country. Then I scraped ice off a windshield and drove to the C-SPAN studios, where a picture window showed a serene daybreak over the Capitol dome.

While I was on C-SPAN’s “Washington Journal” for a live interview, the program aired some rarely seen footage with the voices of two courageous politicians who challenged the warfare state.

So, on Sunday morning, viewers across the country saw Barbara Lee speaking on the House floor three days after 9/11 -- just before she became the only member of Congress to vote against the president’s green-light resolution to begin the U.S. military attack on Afghanistan.

“However difficult this vote may be, some of us must urge the use of restraint,” she said. The date was Sept. 14, 2001. Congresswoman Lee continued: “Our country is in a state of mourning. Some of us must say, Let’s step back for a moment, let’s just pause just for a