U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, formerly of Greenport (and currently based in Troy) has been making the news this week via several key items in the nationa's capital. First, she gave a speech in defense of reproductive rights, and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), including a direct hit at Senator Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), who in the past week characterized Planned Parenthood as being 90 percent about abortion. He later admitted that was not intended to be a factual statement; 3 percent of Planned Parenthood activities involve abortion. Then, she became a co-sponsor of new legislation to create a buffer zone around military funerals, the better to thwart the use of first amendment rights by the Westboro baptist Church and other entities using such occasions for protest purposes. According to Huffington Post, Gillibrand was also key in drafting a letter from 22 Democratic senators to President Obama asking him to use his executive authority to prevent deportation of young people who would have benefited from the DREAM Act, a bill that failed in the upper chamber last year. The legislation would have allowed undocumented immigrants who entered the U.S. as children to stay, provided they kept a clean record and either enrolled in college or joined the military. "Current law unfairly punishes thousands of young people who grew up here and know only America as their home, holding them back from making a contribution to our country's military and economy," Gillibrand said in a statement within the message to Obama. "These young people deserve better." After winning re-election with a large majority last November, it seems our junior senator has decided NOT to rest on her laurels... Could SHE be aiming for higher office?