The Capitol looks beautiful and I am honored to be at work tonight.

My resolution, standing with the vast majority of Americans who know we can and must be safer, is to cede no ground to those who would convince us the path is too steep, or we too weak.

Our democracy's history is littered with names we neither remember nor celebrate - people who stood in the way of progress while protecting the powerful. On Wednesday, a number of senators voted to join that list.

The Capitol looks beautiful and I am honored to be at work tonight.

Our office corner has really become an area where the Tea party movement congregates and the rhetoric is really heated. Not just the calls but the e-mails, the slurs.

Hope and faith. You have to have hope and faith... Long ways to go. Grateful to survive. I's frustrating. Mentally hard. Hard work. I'm trying. Trying so hard to get better. Regain what I've lost... I will get stronger. I will return.

But the safety of the world, in some sense, depends on your saying no to inhumane ideas. Standing up for one's own integrity makes you no friends. It is costly. Yet defiance of the mob, in the service of that which is right, is one of the highest expressions of courage I know.