Abnormally interesting town hall meetings have caused some in Congress to make their August events invitation-only. This tactic, a favorite of the Bush administration, has been bemoaned by the right as cowardice. Senator Byron Dorgan, who puts the D in the Red State of ND, went ahead and held meetings anyway. I went to a few to see what the fuss was all about. (Hint: It's not about health care.)

If our Congress can be measured on a scale of feces (and it should), Senator Byron Leslie Dorgan is closer to adorable rabbit droppings than, say, the diseased swine diarrhea that is Michele Bachmann (R-MN). A three-time senator, Dorgan is the author of Take This Job and Ship It: How Corporate Greed and Brain-Dead Politics Are Selling Out America. One of only eight senators to vote "No" on 1999's financial deregulation, he is now famous for saying: "I think we will look back in 10 years and say we should not have done this, but we did because we forgot the lessons of the past." READ MORE 33