Mailer smeared Congressman Kirk

In the past few weeks my mailbox has been flooded by misleading fliers from a group calling itself "Patriot Majority Midwest." The first few peddled the same lie: that Mark Kirk voted to allow health insurance companies to drop coverage for breast cancer screenings.

Nobody believes that the Planned Parenthood endorsed candidate voted against women's health, so now they are trying to convince me that Kirk is responsible for the bad economy, even though anyone who ever took so much as a high school economics class knows that simply is not true. Patriot Majority is a 527 group, like the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth in 2004.

Its donors are made up exclusively of big unions. Once I saw that the unions were behind this I realized why they are attacking Mark Kirk. Congressman Kirk voted against the card check law in early 2007. The big unions want this law dearly, because it would do away with the secret ballot in union elections. These big unions also oppose trade agreements like NAFTA and CAFTA, both of which Congressman Kirk supports.

This smear campaign against him is the unions' payback to Kirk for his votes. The 10th Congressional district is home to more people with graduate and postgraduate degrees than any other party of the country. I sincerely hope that the voters here are too smart to be fooled by these thugs and their baseless smears. Let's show them that their low down, anything-goes brand of politics has no place here and re-elect Congressman Mark Kirk!

Laura Fine

Deerfield