OC/DC: All's Quiet on the Eastern Front
Posted by: Jeff Solsby | 12/27/2007 6:01 AM
Most in Washington, D.C. grow excited during the December Doldrums: very little happens. This year the adage is true, but some newsworthy items have popped:
- OC's own Rep. John Campbell, my home-town Congressman, has steadily gained increasing national attention as a fiscal hawk. Washington Post columnist George Will lauded his efforts just before Christmas, here.
- Not too far upstate, California Democratic Rep. Bob Filner "resolved" matters with at Virginia commonwealth court and the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct ("the ethics committee") regarding what the committee characterized as a "charge of misdemeanor assault and battery" stemming from an altercation at Dulles airport in suburban Virginia. On December 19, the full ethics committee resolved its investigation into the incident in which Rep. Filner got testy with an United Airlines employee over waiting 90 minutes for baggage. Filner entered an "Alford" guilty plea in court and paid a civil fine of $100; he subsequently wrote a letter of apology to the United employee in question. Anyone who flies through Dulles knows their baggage claim is in some cases literally miles from the remote terminals, and with massive construction is oft delayed. While Filner got his Christmas wish from the committee, Californians are reminded of the juvenile behavior regularly displayed by some elected officials.
- It reminds me of the time I rode on the Dulles to LAX flight with a certain Los Angeles-area Democratic member (a former Assembly Member, currently serving in Congress), who boarded and departed the plane via jetway stairs to the tarmac, and left reams of papers and luggage for a staff member to clean up. In any event, the Filner incident was mentioned in today's In The Loop column in the Washington Post. A link to the ethics committee release is here.
- Finally, for the umpteenth time in recent memory, the government has been operating under a "continuing resolution" while Congress and the President negotiate over the outstanding dozen-or-so annual appropriations bills that fund government operations. Yesterday, President Bush signed the FY 2008 omnibus spending bill totaling about $554.7 billion according to late press accounts. The President, justifiably concerned about the number and process of inserting certain earmarks, is exploring ways through the executive branch budget implementation process to block some of these items. In his signing statement, the President criticized some 9800 earmarks totaling $10 billion.
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