James Carville's email today:

Dear Friend,

If you really want to scare your friends, I recommend dressing as a Washington Republican.

Here's a group of people so shameful they oppose the SCHIP bill that would give health insurance to ten million children. On top of that, they launched a vicious political attack on a twelve-year-old boy, Graeme Frost, who suffered a near-fatal car accident, after he delivered a radio address imploring the President to sign the children's health care bill. They went to his house, spread lies about his parents' finances and even posted his address on a website so his family could be harassed.

I've seen low in my day, but attacking Graeme Frost is really the bottom of the barrel -- and this is only the beginning. In 2008, desperately trying to return to power, Republicans are bound to turn their smear machine on Harry Reid. We have to make sure he has the resources to fight back on behalf of all Democrats.

Fight the Republican smear machine -- make a contribution to Harry Reid today.

After launching their attack on the twelve-year-old boy, Republicans ran away from responsibility until the media finally caught on to their dirty game.

Republican staffers were giving anonymous quotes to reporters proclaiming they had not been involved -- but it turned out they were helping smear the kid's family by sending emails stating his parents should not be eligible for the program because the father owned his own business, and Graeme and his sister attend private school.

Well the truth is, both children were on scholarship, and even the conservative editorial board of the Wall Street Journal wrote, "It turns out, they belonged to just the sort of family that a modest SCHIP bill is supposed to help."

We can expect more of these attacks in the year to come. If Republicans were boxers, they'd spend most of their time hitting below the belt. Well, we beat them and their ugly tactics in 2006, and we'll do it again next year, but Harry Reid needs your support right now.

Fight the Republican smear machine -- make a contribution to Harry Reid today.

Thank you,

James Carville

On Wednesday, President Bush was asked why he vetoed the CHIP legislation that would provide health care to almost ten million children. His response: "to ensure that I am relevant".

It is amazing that he thinks his relevancy is more important than health care for ten million children.

We already have 69 votes in the Senate, more than enough to pass the bill without the President, and the House of Representatives came within 13 votes of overriding his veto yesterday.

This is a tiny margin, and your efforts can help put us over the top.

Sign our petition to member of the House who oppose CHIP -- tell them our children are more important than the President's relevancy.

Now the President is saying "Why don't we sit down and compromise on CHIP?" How in the world does he think we got where we are? How did we get to 69 senators to support this legislation? Compromise.

We started with a cost of $70 billion, then went to $50 billion and finally compromised at $35 billion. For the President to come now and say, "Let's compromise," is completely disingenuous. Saving children should be more important to the President than saving face.

Sign our petition to member of the House who oppose CHIP -- tell them our children are more important than the President's relevancy.

Here is the irony of the President's veto: This program was created by Orrin Hatch, a conservative Republican, and Ted Kennedy 10 years ago. Why? Because Orrin Hatch had two families come to him -- both families were working. They didn't qualify for Medicaid. They couldn't buy insurance. They didn't have the money. So in the finest example of bipartisan cooperation, conservative Orrin Hatch and liberal Ted Kennedy sat down and created one of our nation's most successful health care programs.

Now George Bush vetoed this bill simply to remain relevant. Ten million children are not irrelevant.

Sign our petition to member of the House who oppose CHIP -- tell them our children are more important than the President's relevancy.