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Monday, December 31, 2007
Broun on eating a lion: “Not very tasty”
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Athens Banner-Herald this weekend announced its newsmaker of 2007.
The paper picked hometown Rep. Paul Broun, a Republican who surprised Georgia’s political class when he beat nine other candidates this year to replace the late Charlie Norwood in Congress.
There’s a full Q&A with Broun about his election, his faith and his upcoming battle to keep his seat next November.
But Broun also answers a few priceless questions about his big-game hunting and the animals he’s killed, stuffed and, to the chagrin of fellow lawmakers, moved into his Capitol Hill office, including a full-grown Kodiak bear.
Here are a few favorites:
B-H: You eat everything you kill. What does a lion taste like?
Broun: It’s not very tasty. It’s really chewy.
B-H: What’s the best-tasting game you’ve had?
Broun: It’s the warthog. It is truly pork.
But Broun told the paper that entering Congress has forced some serious changes in his hunting habits and diet.
“My diet has changed a lot,” Broun said. “I don’t have time to eat dinner or eat supper. Oftentimes I eat a bag of peanuts for lunch and a bag of peanuts for dinner.”
And we all know that there’s no sport to hunting peanuts - especially when there’s a bowl of them in your front office.
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English-only workplace not so popular
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
When Rep. Tom Price, a Roswell Republican, introduced legislation earlier this month that would allow employers to require their employees to speak English - and English only - on the job, our best guess was that it would be overwhelmingly popular in his conservative district.
But a voluntary poll on Price’s congressional web page offers a bit of a surprise.
Price’s “Poll of the Month” asks, “Should employers have the freedom to require employees to speak English on the job?” Some 47 percent of those who responded favored it. But 53 percent said no to the proposal.
Web polls that solicit responses are far from scientific. The identity and location of respondents are unknown, as is the margin of error. Furthermore, such polls often attract only those who feel most vehement about an issue, omitting a major cross-section of voters.
Still, in a state and congressional district that so heavily favor stricter immigration legislation and complain about bilingual ballots and such, an English-only workplace would have seemed a no-brainer.
So what makes Price’s proposal less attractive to Georgians? Give us a hint.
Pole climbing, not dancing, for this candidate
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Dale Cardwell is going to new heights in his bid to unseat incumbent Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss in 2008.
Cardwell is going 320 feet up, in fact.
Cardwell told the AJC on Monday that he will scale a 320-foot pole at Corey Tower in downtown Atlanta on New Year’s Day and remain there “until my message is heard.”
The former television journalist for WSB-TV said that he will stay up there on a platform for as long as it takes for people to “realize and discuss how much trouble we are in in our country.”
Those problems, he said, include a concentration of power among special interests who control too much of Washington.
So, Cardwell is going to sit, eat, sleep and chat from the top of a 2-and-a-half foot by 6-foot platform 320 feet up.
And how long will it take?
“When I get that message across, I’ll know it,” Cardwell said. “If it takes me three days, it’ll take three days. If it takes three weeks it takes three weeks.”
Cardwell said he’ll wear a snow suit and have a tarp to keep him protected from wind and rain. He’ll also have a chair and a computer and will chat on-line with supporters. A “tower cam” will run 24 hours a day, broadcasting over the Internet at dale08.com.
He said Corey Tower is owned by Corey Media and they have agreed to let him perch up there. He’s also signed an liability waiver.
“This is how passionate and determined I am to tell people,” Cardwell said.
Corey Tower is at 225 Corey Center SE in Atlanta, across from the Capitol and just east of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.
Cardwell plans to head to his perch at 10 a.m.
Other announced Democrats seeking the right to face Chambliss in November are DeKalb County CEO Vernon Jones and Rand Knight, an Atlanta ecologist.
— Aaron Gould Sheinin
Those Stones tickets were more expensive than anyone thought
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
On its front page today, the Wall Street Journal has a piece detailing the effort by Ameriquest Mortgage Co., once the nation’s largest subprime lender, to beat down legislation in Washington and several states that would have curtailed lending to risky borrowers.
Says the article:
“Working with a husband-and-wife team of Washington lobbyists, it handed out more than $20 million in political donations and played a big role in persuading legislators in New Jersey and Georgia to relax tough new laws.”
This is the killer line:
“Ameriquest also handed out Rolling Stones tickets to state legislators in Georgia, Maryland, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Washington and California, according to ethics records and local news accounts.”
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