It turns out that Jim Traficant's hair was phony all along. You have to wonder, if he was going to wear a wig anyway, why he didn't get one which looked like it was produced on this planet.
Hey, do you think it's possible, that when he ended every speech with the words, "beam me up" he really MEANT it?
It seems to me that a guy like Traficant, who raised being guileless from an art all the way up to a religion, who wore 60's disco outfits like a badge of honor, and who reveled in poking his finger in the collective eyes of his pompous colleagues, should have shown up on the floor of the House, on his last day in Congress, without the wig.
Maybe not.
Speaking of elected officials who cheated and probably lied about it, the day after the Senate Ethics Committee stood tall and issued its courageous ruling on the case of NJ Senator Robert Torricelli for accepting illegal gifts, illegal campaign contributions, and who knows what-all, here were two headlines:
USA Today: "NJ Sen. Torricelli 'Severely Admonished' for Taking Gifts"
Washington Post: "Senate Ethics Panel Rebukes Torricelli"
Notice any difference in tone?
And, while the House Ethics Committee held the Traficant hearings in the full view of television cameras, the Senate Ethics Committee will not even release the bleached transcripts of the Torricelli whitewash.
On Monday, Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD) spoke at that Democratic meeting in New York City saying President Bush "was full of tough talk but short on real solutions."
On Tuesday, when the President signed the corporate responsibility act - by many estimations a "real solution" - in the East Room of the White House, the photos of the ceremony show Daschle all but singing the Ren-and-Stimpy Happy-Happy-Joy-Joy song as he smiled and applauded the enactment of the bill; AND accepted one of the four pens the President used to sign the bill.
On the O'Reilly Factor the other night, Bill asked me whom President Bush feared most among the potential Democratic candidates for President in 2004. I said, given what we heard in New York, they White House should be looking at Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis.
If Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton Rodham is a Democratic MODERATE, you can see how far left the Democratic party has swerved.
As evidence: After the Democratic wannabes finished their Bush-Bashing in New York, Al "Alone-Again-Natural-EE" Gore (who had declined to appear at the event) was seen lunching in Washington with what the AP's Will Lester called, "the leaders of many of the top labor groups ... at the Hay-Adams Hotel, just across the street from AFL-CIO headquarters in downtown Washington."
When you've decided that AFL-CIO president John Sweeney represents the center of your party, I guess Hillary IS a moderate.
In another sign of the times, two WorldCom executives were arrested yesterday following in the perp-walk footsteps of the executives from Adelphia Communications who were helped into the back seats of police vehicles last week.
I'm old enough to remember the good old days when we read the papers about the latest Hollywood goofball to be arrested for punching out a photographer. Or the other good old days when we read the papers about the latest professional athlete goofball to be arrested for punching out his wife.
Now, we have these guys who are about to trade their $2,300 suits for Susan McDougal orange jumpers and are about to go from having absolute control over the lives of tens of thousands of employees to being some bad guy's wife.
Maybe Jim Traficant.
On the Secret Decoder Ring page today: an unbelievablytedious explanation of a Foucault Pendulum, a short explanation of Ren and Stimpy, some excellent photos (including one of Daschle applauding), AND the usual things.
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