I interrupt Connecticut week with trepidation, but there are other campaigns going on. Like mine, for instance.

NARAL just sent an e-mail to about 50,000 members about hot congressional races. The e-mail features eight campaigns, including mine.

Yeah, yeah, I know, NARAL endorsed Joe Lieberman, and one of the eight candidates featured in the e-mail today is Nancy Johnson, a Republican from Connecticut. Nancy Johnson gets credit for being a "moderate Republican" on the strength of her position on abortion rights, but toes the Republican line on virtually everything else. I read the criticism of NARAL and the Sierra Club in Crashing the Gate that they go out of their way to support a few stray Republicans who are good on their specific issue, but will vote to deliver control of the House and Senate to leadership that is anathema.

Cut NARAL some slack. How can NARAL ask Republicans in Congress or state legislatures to support abortion rights if NARAL is going to support their Democratic opponents no matter what? And how can they sit out a race between a friend with a proven record on their issues and someone who says the right thing?

Here's the deal: NARAL members care about abortion rights, but it's not all they care about. I'll wager that many if not most of NARAL's members are voting for Ned Lamont tomorrow, and for Chris Murphy in November. Give them a little credit.

So if you're a NARAL member, and you want a Democratic majority in Congress, don't give to Nancy Johnson. How hard is that?

But the other seven races are all the real deal. You'll recognize many of the candidates from the Netroots Endorsed list: Lois Murphy, Joe Sestak, Patrick Murphy, Darcy Burner and Bruce Braley, all pro-choice Democrats running against anti-choice Republicans.

But let me just say a word about the issue of abortion rights and my opponent, Vernon Robinson.

We've created a page at our campaign website to which the NARAL e-mail will link. But if you want a quick idea of where Vernon Robinson is on the issue, here's his response to a Planned Parenthood questionnaire for congressional candidates, which Robinson prominently displayed on his campaign website:

Robinson also joined in the protests outside Terri Schiavo's hospital in Florida, he said, "to witness the involuntary euthanization of Terri at the direction of her estranged husband and his accomplices in the Florida judiciary." The protests were organized by Randall Terry of Operation Rescue fame. Terry's charming tactics have included delivering a dead fetus to Bill Clinton at the Democratic National Convention in 1992. Robinson's now infamous television ad "The Twilight Zone," which Forbes described as "an internet phenomenon," also features a dead fetus.

And Robinson has joined Operation Rescue-style abortion clinic protests, he said in a fundraising letter, "to try to persuade young women to keep their babies." Yeah, that's what Randall Terry said too. Ask any clinic escort whether the young women who have had to run a gauntlet of protesters thought the protesters were trying to "persuade" them, or to bully and intimidate them.

Do you get the picture yet?

Here's my problem: Robinson raised $561,086 in just the last three months by appealing to the seething anger and hatred of the right wing fringe. Yes, they watched the Twilight Zone ad and loved it, and they contributed to Robinson so he could run more ads. More than 80 percent of Robinson's contributors are from outside of North Carolina.

So yeah, I could use a little help to combat the money coming into North Carolina from the right wing fringe from all over the country.