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Thursday, March 22, 2007
John Lewis on one side, Hank Johnson in the middle in the debate over Iraq
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
On tonight’s broadcast of PBS’ “The News Hour with Jim Lehrer,” two Georgia Democrats were featured in a piece on the U.S. House effort to use the budget to bring an end next year to U.S. military involvement in Iraq.
U.S. Rep. John Lewis (D-Atlanta) is part of the whip effort to keep Democrats in line. “I’m not prepared to vote for another dollar or another dime to support this war. It is time to bring our young men and our young women home,” he said.
But U.S. Rep. Hank Johnson (D-DeKalb County), the man who booted anti-war activist Cynthia McKinney from office, is among those unsure about the efffort.
Says Johnson: “The people of the Fourth District by and large are ready for this war to come to an end, and the want to see a cessation of deaths of United States soldiers in combat on the streets of Iraq and they want to see that happen now.
“Politically, the reality is that you just can’t yank the troops off the streets. You just can’t leave them without the funding they need in order to wind this process down.”
Here is the audio.
For a good time, call your state rep
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
A tip of the hat to Peach Pundit for alerting us to the howler of the week. By early afternoon the site had been fixed, but until then the 800 number listed on the General Assembly website for the House Information Office actually got you to a phone sex chat line.
According to House communications director Clelia Davis, her office dropped the 800 number more than two years ago, and the number was later reassigned. But until today, nobody noticed the number was still on the website.
Davis said sabotage isn’t suspected - it’s apparently just a coincidence that a phone sex outfit picked up the number. But you can’t tell us the fates don’t have a randy sense of humor.
It’s not the South Carolina border he’s worried about
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Issues come and issues go. But a recent fundraising letter sent out by Sen. Jim Whitehead for his 10th District congressional campaign makes it clear immigration is just as much a hot-button at the grassroots as it was before the Republicans lost their congressional majority.
“No one can replace a legend like Charlie Norwood. But I can be who I am, Jim Whitehead, and as such I will fight with everything I have to stop Ted Kennedy and bring this immigration crisis under control!” writes Whitehead, who is considered the frontrunner in the special election race to fill the seat left open by Norwood’s death in February.
This week, Whitehead introduced a measure to name the school of dentistry at the Medical College of Georgia after Norwood, who practiced that profession before he went to Congress.
In his letter to potential contributors, Whitehead also puts an interesting spin on the state’s long-bemoaned lack of participation at the polls.
“When the liberals bemoan the low turnout we often see, what they are really saying is that everyone should be able to vote, whether or not they live in the district, whether they are a citizen or illegal immigrant.
“”I was proud to support our Voter ID law which required anyone voting to prove they were a citizen and eligible to vote in that district. An illegal immigrant should no more be voting in our elections in Georgia than you or I should be voting in Mexico. That’s just wrong!” Whitehead writes.
