On behalf of county Democrats, I respectfully take issue with those who lambaste Congresswoman Kathy Dahlkemper, claiming unjustifiably that she doesn't listen to her constituents. To me she's always been all ears; I've conversed with Dahlkemper on numerous occasions, as well as attended her town hall meetings, especially during the heyday of the health care reform debates.

On the latter, the only ones who "got very defensive and argumentative," as one Dahlkemper critic quips, were the tea party types, whose intentions were to disrupt the congresswoman's give-and-take meetings. This time around, though, Dahlkemper held one-on-one chitchats with citizens who showed up for her Butler County April 10 office hours.

Accordingly, she should be commended for it, for she allowed each visitor an equal and fair opportunity to state his/her case. And that deflated the hot-air billowing of tea party blowhards who were hoping to hiss and heckle Dahlkemper in a public skewer-spectacle.

As a proud Democrat, I support Dahlkemper, President Barack Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. In unison, they passed landmark health care reform that our citizens, for years to come, will cherish, just as they now cherish Social Security and Medicare.

Let us not forget that Dahlkemper takes credit for inserting into the reform measure the right to keep young people on their parents' insurance policy until the age of 26.

I have little-to-nil empathy for those hiding behind the Constitution, scrawling some patriotic half-slogans on pickets, and broad-stroking hardworking officeholders as either "liberal, socialist or unpatriotic."

If anyone wants to blame someone for the "Great Recession," they should look to George W. Bush, who left the United States hobbling with a crippled economy, mired in two costly foreign wars (Iraq and Afghanistan), and high unemployment figures.

As a result, many in the middle class found themselves without health care coverage through no fault of their own.

Now, if anyone is going to hound me about Dahlkemper being too liberal, let me remind him or her that Dahlkemper is a "blue dog" Democrat who fought during the health care fray to keep federal money from being used to fund abortions.

Finally, I am saddened with angry tea potters who portray people with whom they disagree politically as "enemies within, like Dahlkemper," brandishing a petty jingoism that is beneath us.

They should agree to disagree respectfully, instead of hurling irresponsible splatter at dedicated public officials such as our congresswoman.

From now on I shall sip coffee only and not diddle with the teapot.