Stumble of the Week

Karl Rove. “Congrats to @KarlRove on blowing $400 million this cycle. Every race @CrossroadsGPS ran ads in, the Republicans lost. What a waste of money” – tweet from Donald Trump, who should know a stumble when he sees one (but doesn’t). Rove’s political groups gave $127 million to Romney and $10 million to defeat Sherrod Brown in Ohio, where Rove played a particularly seedy role – or roles – as an “outside” fundraiser, a political insider and a Fox News commentator. When the network declared Ohio for Obama, Rove had a conniption and then an on-air fight with the Fox (!) staff. Results: Rove’s groups lost one of one presidential, 10 of 12 senate, and four of nine house races. Common Ground. Amid all the talk of bipartisanship, consider this: In Obama’s first term, Congressional Republicans tried to kill 70 percent of all bills before a vote and made more filibusters than had been made over six decades after WWII – an era that included intense opposition to civil rights.

Return on Investment. Sheldon Adelson was the “biggest single donor in political history” and Linda McMahon spent $97 million of her own money on two senate seats in two years: ROI 0%.

Graciousness. “What happened? A political (sic) narcissistic sociopath leveraged fear and ignorance with a campaign marked by mendacity and malice rather than a mandate for resurgence and reform. Instead of using his high office to articulate a vision for our future, Obama used it as a vehicle for character assassination, replete with unrelenting and destructive distortion, derision, and division” (Mary Matalin).

Stumble of the Week

Political Sanity. As I stumbled into Ohio late yesterday, I heard this disquieting radio report: In one more race awash with outside money, the Ohio Senate candidates have spent over $41 million on over 62,000 TV ads. Republican challenger Josh Mandel’s campaign has spent four times that of incumbent Sherrod Brown, and 85% of Mandel’s money has come from a few donors who can remain anonymous because of the Supreme Court’s Citizens’ United ruling. Penn State. A few years ago I was working with Pennsylvania newspapers to improve the state’s restrictive open-records laws, and I witnessed President Graham Spanier tell a Senate committee that Penn State should be exempt from the new law because . . . well, it was Penn State. No longer simply a state college in a bucolic region, the university had become a huge business enterprise whose trade secrets apparently outweighed its academic commitment to transparency. All the newspapers want to know, Spanier peremptorily told the committee, is how much Joe Paterno makes. It turned out that the university was concealing far more about the football team than the coach’s salary. Yesterday Spanier was indicted for his role in a “conspiracy of silence [to] actively conceal the truth” in the Jerry Sandusky case.

The Climate Hoax. Most politicians continue to tap dance around the connection between the growing frequency of huge storms and other weather “events” and the science of global warming. Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who is confronting the issue firsthand, yesterday endorsed Barack Obama because he is the only candidate to take the matter seriously.

Stumble of the Week

• A123 Systems, the battery maker for electric cars, filed for bankruptcy this week. One of the Obama administration’s investments in alternative energy, A123 had also sought a huge infusion from China to prop it up. The lesson, I think, is that, while the federal government should support research and development of new technologies, it should not back individual companies.

• Clear Channel, a subsidiary of Bain Capital, is refusing to clarify who paid for hundreds of billboards against voter fraud that appeared in largely minority urban neighborhoods in Wisconsin and Ohio. A Clear Channel spokesman wrote NPR that, although anonymity violates company policy, the contract was signed “by mistake” and the billboards will stay up. No word on why the same “mistake” was made in 2010.

• Sanctimony took a double hit, as the Boy Scouts, who have a long history of opposition to diversity, atheists and gay people, released 15,000 pages of documents that revealed decades of sexual abuse and thousands of victims; and Lance Armstrong was finally unmasked as a cheater. Both have done many good things, and yet the legacy of each is forever tarnished by arrogant secrecy.

• Koch Industries continued to push the limits of corporate hypocrisy by providing a ham-fisted list of approved candidates to all 50,000 employees, spending millions on political advertising, and requiring company approval for employees seeking public office.

• Finally, me. Apologies for my technical ineptitude that sent yesterday’s blog directly to many spam folders, which some of you have suggested is their proper destination, and then compounding the ineptitude by showering you with duplicates.

Stumble of the Week

Breaking news: “I am pro-choice,” says Romney. Mitt Romney announced yesterday that it’s time for the federal government to be less involved in our personal lives. “As I said 10 years ago, ‘the choice to have an abortion is a deeply personal one. Women should be free to choose based on their own beliefs, not the government's.’ All the government adds is red tape.”

Pressed by reporters on his “evolving positions on abortion, guns and health care,” Romney said, “Heck, that Massachusetts gig is going over a lot better with voters these days than it did with Rick, Newt and Michelle. Talk about reaching across the aisle – 85% of the Massachusetts legislators I dealt with were Democrats! I barely knew half their names – I called the other 47% ‘fella.’ But we got Romneycare done . . . although I had to work like heck to push the personal mandate through. Thank goodness Teddy Kennedy helped me twist some arms. It was Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neill all over again.”

Asked about the seeming discrepancies, Romney said, “What discrepancies? Completely different situations require completely different approaches. In 2002 I was running for governor of Massachusetts. Last fall I was seeking the Republican nomination. Now I want to be president. Totally different.”

Asked if he planned to release more tax returns, he replied, “Honestly, fellas, I’d like to. But I have said no, and I need to be consistent.”

Romney’s aides ended the interview when a reporter shouted out a question about Massachusetts’ assault weapons ban.

Stumble of the Week (Q &A)

Question: Why don’t candidates want to release their tax returns? Answer: Take Massachusetts’ 6th Congressional District as an example. Republican challenger Richard Tisei’s last 10 returns show that twice he paid no taxes at all. Tisei, who spends much time running for office, is not a rich man, and his real estate business faltered in the Bush recession (2006 and 2008). His returns are straightforward, and none of this would have been a problem . . .  if only Mitt Romney hadn’t made that comment about the 47 percent. Meanwhile, John Tierney, the 8-term Democratic incumbent, finally released his returns yesterday morning after vigorous prodding from The Boston Globe. They were clean . . . some argue too clean, as they make no mention of the $223,000 prosecutors say his wife received from her brother’s illegal offshore gambling operation. John and Patrice Tierney say those funds were gifts from family members that needed neither to be taxed nor even reported. The congressman’s lawyer has threated libel, the brother remains on the lam in Antigua, Patrice Tierney served a month in jail, and the notion of public service has taken another hit.

Question: Do you think Obama will carry Kansas?

Answer: No. But at least he will be on the ballot after a birther withdrew a petition to have him removed. The petition had enabled GOP Secretary of State Kris Kobach to demand Obama’s birth certificate once again and to raise doubts about the eligibility of a man who has been president for four years.

Question: Was Independence really declared in 1976 as you wrote yesterday?

Answer: Um. No. Next question.

Stumble of the Week

Amendment 1: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. The First Amendment did not stumble this week, as the U. S.  government took an appropriate and principled position by (1) strongly condemning the attack on our Benghazi consulate, (2) deploring the content of the film, “Innocence of Muslims,” whose trailer allegedly ignited the deadly riots, and (3) explaining why it could and would not prevent the film’s production and distribution. Never did our government waver on the issue of First Amendment rights nor excuse the murderous actions that followed.

The First Amendment is our most difficult amendment. It is also the most important. It is no coincidence that the first rights totalitarian regimes strip from the people are those it enumerates. Consequently, those rights must be safeguarded above all others. It is pretty easy to protect the right of people to say things we find harmless or agreeable. It is when someone says something stupid, obnoxious or uncomfortable that we need the first amendment most.

The “Innocence of Muslims” trailer is obnoxious. (One reader called it “cyber bullying, with tragic consequences.”) But above all it is stupid. In fact, it is so puerile and badly made that it is hard to understand how it could evoke any reaction but derisive laughter. That it invoked, instead, deadly retaliation is truly frightening.

Stumble of the Week

Note to self: How could Richard Nixon not make my list of least favorite presidents? Because . . .

#5 Andrew Jackson, the president of the people with an unfortunate whiff of Pol Pot. He opened the White House doors to the “common man” while he threw merit out the window by awarding government jobs solely on patronage – all of which pales beside the “trail of tears,” the forced and deadly relocation of all southeastern Indian nations to Oklahoma.

#4 Rutherford B. Hayes shouldn’t have been president at all. Samuel Tilden won the popular vote and led by 19 electoral votes, with three southern states in dispute. A commission, voting along partisan lines, gave their 20 votes to Hayes. The price? The removal of federal troops from the South, the collapse of Reconstruction, and the lethal ascendency of Jim Crow.

#3 Ronald Reagan’s folksy demeanor masked a divisive presidency. His image of the welfare queen in a Cadillac signaled that the poor – at least those who were urban and black – were not just getting what they deserved. They were getting more than they deserved. His pronouncement that trees cause pollution signaled that know-nothingism was a legitimate response to environmental destruction.

#2 James Buchanan. Pennsylvania’s only president spent four years doing nothing while the nation moved with increasing violence toward civil war.

# 1 George W. Bush. After going on vacation for the month of August, he returned just before September 11^th . . . to which his response was to tell us to go shopping while he launched two disastrous off-the-books wars, legitimized torture, and instituted tax-and-spending policies that led to the worst recession since the 1930s and left the country in shambles.

Stumble of the Week

To no one’s surprise, organized labor stumbled in Tampa this week, as the Republican Party approved a platform aimed at dismantling the American labor movement, with a particular emphasis on public unions. I have no illusions about what the people who wrote the platform and the enormous money behind them want, which is to break, not just unions but the countervailing power of labor itself. That would enable “the malefactors of great wealth” (to use an old Republican’s term) to make even more money with even less regard for the conditions of the workforce. It’s almost like kicking a dead horse, thanks to the moribund nature of a labor movement in which under 12% of the workforce is unionized – and less than 7% of the private sector.

It may be cathartic to blame the bosses, but labor itself has much to answer for. In too many cases, it has stifled innovation, protected its power, and encouraged infiltration by the mob. It has been silent or recalcitrant on some of the most critical matters of the day. Its sole emphasis on jobs and wages has often made it antagonistic to environmental issues that may have more long-term impact on the workforce. It has reflexively opposed innovations that might improve public education. And it has offered little to the desperate plight of the inner cities, which once supplied the bulk of its membership. Labor needs to reform itself so that it can provide a broader vision to America's workers.

Stumble of the Week

• As if it weren’t dead enough, bipartisanship stumbled this week when Judge Robert Simpson of the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court refused to block the state’s voter identification law. Such laws may appear benign and reasonable in their wording, but at least in this case the intent was “to allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania.” That’s not me speaking; that’s Mike Turzai, the Republican Majority Leader who sponsored the legislation. A recent study found 27 instances of voter impersonation in 197 million votes cast across the country from 2002-5. To swat that gnat, lawmakers are eager to disenfranchise as many as 9 percent of the state’s eligible voters.

• Tolerance stumbled again in Tampa when the GOP platform committee added a draconian plank on immigration to go with its call to end abortion with no exceptions. Explained Kris Kobach, Kansas’ Secretary of State, “If you really want to create a job tomorrow, you can remove an illegal alien today,” oblivious to how many more of our jobs are going to Asia than to immigrants. I can’t wait to see the convention’s civil rights plank.

• Now that Larry Ellison has bought the Hawaiian island of Lanai, archrival Bill Gates has apparently set his sights on Rhode Island. Asked his opinion on buying a whole state, presumptive GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney, “I am in favor of privatization . . . especially of states whose electoral votes my campaign wrote off months ago.”

Stumble of the Week

Lucky 13. That’s the minimum percent of his income that Mitt Romney paid in taxes the last 10 years. “Every year I’ve paid at least 13 percent,” he said. “And if you add in addition the amount that goes to charity,” added Mitt, “why the number gets well above 20 percent.” Suggesting that his tax-deductible tithe to the Mormon Church virtually doubles his effective tax rate is certainly creative bookkeeping. The Romneys announced their findings after rereading a decade of their returns. But they aren’t sharing them with the rest of us. Maintaining that they are “very transparent to what’s legally required of us,” Ann Romney said releasing more returns would just provide “ammunition” for their foes. Well, of course. It gets even better, wrote a friend who sent a link to Jerome Corsi after last Friday’s “transcripter” post. Corsi, a tea party activist, Harvard PhD, author of The Obama Nation and “swift boater” in the 2004 elections, who has called Fox News too liberal and Paul Ryan the “best possible choice.” has now produced evidence that, before Michelle, Barack Obama was married to his Pakistani roommate at Occidental College. I think there must be a contest to see who can lay the most abominations on Obama, and Dr. Corsi will be hard to beat: homosexuality, same-sex marriage, miscegenation, interfaith dating, loving a Moslem, sitting in another man’s lap, hypocrisy, lying. I know this is the fringe – at least I hope it is – but how often do we need to be reminded that the fringe is dangerous?

Stumble of the Week

“Birtherism,” the cult – whose most famous members are Glenn Beck and The Donald – that insists Barack Obama was not born in America, despite how many iterations of his birth certificate he produces, and is therefore at best ineligible to be president and at worst some kind of Manchurian candidate whom dark forces have made the first communist* president of the United States, seems finally to be running out of steam. But fear not, it has been replaced by “transcripterism,” whose adherents have offered a $20,000 reward to anyone who can produce the president’s transcripts from Occidental, Columbia and Harvard Law School. In an article in Beck’s “The Blaze,” Wayne Allyn Root (Columbia 1983) suggests the reason he never heard of his now-famous classmate was because he rarely went to class, got lousy grades and “attended Columbia as a foreign exchange student.” Oh, well, perhaps birtherism isn’t dead yet. Root, of course, equates the demands for Obama’s transcripts to those for Mitt Romney’s tax returns. * Helder Camara (1909-1999), Catholic Archbishop of Brazil: “When I feed the hungry, they call me a saint. When I ask why people are hungry, they call me a communist” (sent by my daughter, Annie).

Human Justice. In northern Mali where the people now live under Sharia law, an alleged thief recently had his hand cut off and a couple accused of adultery was stoned to death. I’m not saying all fundamentalists are alike. I just don’t want them running my country.

Stumble of the Week

Oddities I stumbled on last week: • The latest CBS poll shows that 12% of Americans approve of the current Congress. Meanwhile, a new study estimates that spending on all federal elections will total almost $6 billion this cycle, 77% of it from business interests. That’s a lot of money to buy influence with people held in such low regard. Why not create a lottery for the unemployed, draw 535 names at random and send them to Washington; return the $6 billion to the rich contributors; and raise their marginal tax rates by 10%? Fresh faces, campaign finance reform, fair taxation – done.

• When Lech Walesa endorsed Mitt Romney, he became the first major labor figure to support a Republican since the Teamsters backed Ronald Reagan and George Bush in the 1980s. Known for their infiltration by the mob, the Teamsters also supported Richard Nixon in 1972, six months after he had pardoned Jimmy Hoffa and three years before Hoffa disappeared without a trace.

• In response to a contribution to the Obama campaign, I got a letter from the national finance director that seemed more ‘price is right’ than presidential: Thanks so much for your generous donation. . . .We've always depended on supporters like you – not special interests or Washington lobbyists – for every dollar we get. To show our appreciation, here's a special coupon code for the Obama 2012 store.

DEADLINE!

Using that code at checkout will get you 10 percent off orders of $10 or more. But it's only good through August 1st, so swing by the store now.

Stumble of the Week

Rational Discourse 1. A sign in front of the Baptist Church in Palermo, Maine: “The Big Bang. God Said It. Bang It Happened.” I must admit, that is simpler to grasp than Higgs Boson. Rational Discourse 2: Ron Christie, a former aide to Dick Cheney, defended the voter identification laws recently passed in 10 states by reminding us that “voting is a privilege, not a right.” While the effect of the laws will disenfranchise millions of poor and minority citizens, Christie told NPR that their intent is to “preserve the integrity of the ballot box.” So it must be a coincidence that the laws were passed by Republican-controlled legislatures and the vast majority of those who will be turned away have traditional Democratic profiles.

Christie’s position, however ethically obtuse, has been upheld by the Supreme Court, which has granted the states broad discretion to determine voter eligibility. In the early days of the Republic, most states limited that eligibility to white male property owners over 21. But over the years, we have extended the vote to blacks, women, 18-year-olds, etc. – and we have made “free and fair” elections the cornerstone of our foreign policy. Both here and abroad, people have shed blood for the “right to vote,” and our landmark legislation on the matter is the “Voting Rights Act” of 1965.

A privilege is something that somebody grants me. A right is something that inheres to me as a member of the community. And if voting ought to be a fundamental right for everybody else in the world, it certainly should be one for me as well.

Stumble of the Week

National Pride. As economists detected a slight uptick in growth indicators at a pace The New York Times described as “sluggish, if not dismal” (which is the first time I have seen "dismal" used to describe a hopeful trend), ABC News was reporting that the sharp new, Ralph Lauren-designed, red-white-and-blue American Olympic uniforms were “made in China.” Perhaps there’s a connection. The U.S. Olympic Committee responded: "We're proud of our partnership with Ralph Lauren, an iconic American company." Perhaps American manufacturers can get a piece of the knock-off business. The Bris. A regional German court’s decision that circumcision of young boys “amounted to grievous bodily harm” has united Jewish and Muslim organizations as no political negotiations have been able to do. The groups, however, took no stance on female circumcision, which is practiced widely in parts of Africa and the Middle East.

Communication. When former Irish Republican Army commander Martin McGuinnes shook hands with Queen Elizabeth, whose family he had once plotted to assassinate, he gave her a Gaelic blessing, "Slán agus beannacht." Neither McGuinnes nor the queen speaks Gaelic.

Maturity. It’s only July and already the presidential campaign rhetoric is racing to the bottom, with the Romney and Obama teams squabbling over whether the former left Bain Capital in 1999 or 2002. Ostensibly it has to do with job-outsourcing (see above), but it’s really about petty personal shots most of us left on the playground. I’ve got to believe even Romney remembers the year he left Bain.

Stumble of the Week

My brain stumbled (mightily) this week over Higgs boson, the so-called “God particle” believed to be the foundation of life in the universe. I understand almost nothing about it, and yet its apparent discovery has excited, unsettled and bewildered me.

• The excitement is that of discovery – and the quest to understand the biggest and most basic questions of life. The thousands of scientists involved in this project are literally “out there,” pushing against the limits of what we think we know. This particle was an idea almost 50 years before it was discovered. To pursue something so small for so long is a testament not just to intelligence but to faith.

• Frankenstein’s monster reminds us that not all knowledge is beneficial to mankind; and Faust made a bargain with the devil he eternally regretted. What if one day we do unlock the origins of life? Then what? We must hope that the universe has always one more secret.

• Finally, I am bewildered by the people who turn their backs on discoveries such as this. It didn’t take Higgs boson to suggest that the world was not created in seven days 8,000 years ago, at least as we count time. Yet that is what many school boards want taught in their classrooms and what more than a few members of Congress espouse.

It is, in the end, wonder that sustains our lives: Where did I come from? Why am I here? How beautiful is that flower! Why do I love her?

Stumble of the Week

Mitt Romney. John Roberts persuaded the Supreme Court’s “liberal bloc” to uphold Romneycare, limit the power of Congress under the Commerce Clause, and put a “strict constructionist” stamp on the decision . . . and Romney is still complaining. What does it take to satisfy the man? Standing in front of a sign that read “Repeal and Replace,” he pledged to repeal the act on his first day in office. And replace? Surprisingly, he was a bit vague on those details. Roberts is being compared to a lot of things this morning, but no one has yet mentioned John Marshall, the Chief Justice who established the doctrine of judicial review in a case that appeared to hand a significant victory to his arch-rival, Thomas Jefferson, but actually protected the prerogative of the court. Broccoli. The futures market collapsed when it became clear that we were not going to be forced either to buy or eat it, even though it is good for us. Only Antonin Scalia and Rush Limbaugh continued to insist that the ruling could be so construed.

CNN famously got it wrong, announcing that the individual mandate had been overturned (which it actually had under the commerce clause). Meanwhile, the rest of the world appeared to stand still yesterday, as the American media ignored it for Obamacare. Of course, the rest of the world has never understood how its richest country can provide such lousy health coverage at so great a cost. Yesterday was an important first step toward fixing that.

Stumble of the Week

As Egypt stumbles toward weekend elections, pressure is growing to postpone the vote until mid-November in the hope that Barack Obama might be looking for work. “Obama would make a great president for us,” said Darwishi Hussein, a lawyer sitting in Tahrir Square. “He has the qualifications: he was born in Africa and is a Muslim. And he has very good name recognition. There are lots of Husseins in Egypt”

“If you don’t want him, we very much need him,” said Geb Sawalhi, an unemployed musician. “He has experience running a country filled with politicians who revile each other. And now that our supreme court dissolved Parliament, he won’t have to deal with squabbling legislators.”

Speaking at a Rotary breakfast in Ohio, Mitt Romney said, “Barack Obama says he is an American, and I’ll take him at his word until Donald Trump proves otherwise.”

Reached at his sprawling gated ranch in Trump (formerly Arizona), Trump declared, “The Trumpettes are hot on the trail of the real birth certificate. It’s locked in a cave in Utah.

“You should see what is running around down here at night,” he added. “Obama is just the tip of the iceberg.”

The Obama campaign issued the following statement: “Enough is enough. Mitt Romney destroyed thousands of jobs at Bain Capital. This is one he won’t get his hands on. His policies are fine for the 1%, but even with our electoral college, 1% doesn’t get you elected president . . . at least not since 2000, when Clarence Thomas elected Bush.”

Stumble of the Week

The Democrats. The last time there was a major recall election in this country, Gray Davis was sent packing from Sacramento and Arnold Schwartzneggar ended up governor of California. Then the housekeeper surfaced with the love child, and Maria Shriver filed for divorce. So before you push for a recall, you better have your ducks lined up, which the Democrats in Wisconsin did not. As a result, they suffered an embarrassing loss: Scott Walker won more handily than he had the first time and became in the process a Tea Party icon. Outside groups poured millions into the race, with Walker getting the lion’s share of the record-setting $80 million total. Teachers. The backlash against teachers in the wake of the Wisconsin vote is kind of breathtaking, at least on talk radio, where self-styled anti-intellectuals hold kangaroo court. It may seem counterproductive for a country that constantly wrings its hands over the state of its education to treat its teachers so shabbily . . . until you realize that many of the hand-wringers blame teachers for the state of our education. In a nation where both teachers and students go into some urban schools just hoping to survive, where school boards insist that creationism belongs in the science curriculum, and where the exploration of new ideas is considered a subversive activity, teachers have enough on their plates without being made the scapegoats of a problem we need to solve together.

Stumble of the Week

Update. A reader asked whether Harold Simmons (May 24) really was the biggest PAC donor? Bigger than the Koch brothers? Because of the current ability to give both personally and through corporations, it is becoming as hard to trace the money as to pierce the veil of Simmons’ empire. I think Simmons is still the largest individual donor, but Huffington Post reports that the Kochs solicited $100 million to defeat Obama at their recent retreat for rich right-wing donors – and they pledged $60 million themselves. So, in this unsavory contest, Simmons’ lead is clearly in jeopardy – but not nearly as much as the democratic process. Horse Racing. Barely two weeks before he saddles “I’ll Have Another” for the final leg of the Triple Crown, trainer Doug O’Neill received a 45-day suspension for doctoring a horse, a charge he denies. The suspension kicks in after the Belmont Stakes. With its heavy gambling, sorry ethics and abuse of horses, the “sport of kings” has become the “sport of thugs.”

Harvard is apologizing profusely for printing the updated profile submitted by Ted Kaczynski for his 50^th-reunion report. The Unabomber (Harvard 1962) listed his profession as “prisoner” and counted “eight life sentences” among his awards.

Cory Booker, Mayor of Newark and Obama insider, is also apologizing for his public criticism of the campaign’s attacks on Bain Capital. Booker’s real mistake was trying to make a complicated argument in an arena that reduces everything to its lowest common denominator. See Steven Rattner’s piece for a good analysis of the issue.

Stumble of the Week

The Eponymous Mr. Pitts.  The office of Joseph R. Pitt (R PA) is desperately trying to tamp down the laughter after the veteran Congressman sent a letter to a constituent declaring: “With the global war against terrorism, it is now incumbent on Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Yasir Arafat to clamp down on Palestinian extremists that have perpetuated violence and to restart a peace process that has collapsed.”

There was no immediate response from Arafat, who died in 2004, or Sharon, who has been comatose since 2006.

Pitts, a former member of the International Relations Committee, is seeking his 9^th term (despite his public pledge to limit himself to five). One of the House’s most right-wing members, he was tapped as a freshman to chair the Values Action Team, which is the liaison between “traditional values oriented Members and similarly-minded citizen groups.”

Despite his ideology of small government, Joe has dined without interruption at the public trough since 1972, first as a member of the state legislature and then, since 1996, as a Congressman. As a result, he will receive two hefty pensions (including the largest legislative pension in Pennsylvania), numerous perks, and the best health insurance that our money can buy.

I’m not saying “I told you so,” but I did run against Joe Pitts in 1996.

Roger Clemens Trial Update.  Injections also seem needed in the jury box, as Judge Reggie Walton dismissed the second juror in a week for sleeping during the trial.