BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com
They say it happens in threes.
Three men who made a significant, if a disparate, impact on Washington died over the last week.
Bill Young
You could find Bill Young on the far end of the last row of the House floor, holding court in the Florida corner, when he wasn’t managing bills as Chairman of the Appropriations Committee or in the Committee offices, trying to get the leadership to be more reasonable in their allocations. Continue reading
BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com
Mark Leibovich wrote a memorable book about official Washington, its fancy parties, its self-absorbed culture, the incestuous nature of lobbyists, journalists, pundits, strategists, party planners, and socialites.
But there’s a whole other town out there, right under the nose of This Town, and you could see the face of that town in the obituaries of those who died on Monday.
Twelve people were gunned down at the Naval Yard, and I can pretty much guarantee that nobody from This Town had ever met them.
There are plenty of people in this other town in the Washington DC metro area. Some serve at the Navy Yard, some at the Pentagon, some the Geospatial agency, some at the Departments of Agriculture, Labor, Health and Human Services, and various other government agencies. Continue reading
BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON
Valeria Portillo celebrated her 15th birthday this year by the bedside of her father, Ricardo, who was in a coma in a Salt Lake City, Utah hospital. They were supposed to be in Disneyland celebrating.
A few days later, on May 4, Ricardo died of head injuries he received at the hand of a 17-year-old youth league soccer player who didn’t like the penalty referee Portillo called on him.
I can’t imagine what Ricardo’s family is going through, how tragic it must be to lose a father and husband, friend and mentor to such a senseless act. The local community held a memorial service for him and people there praised him as a dedicated and giving human being. There hasn’t been any news about the young man who caused Ricardo’s death. Too bad. If there were; if the coverage of the tragedy were as drawn out as O.J. Simpson’s, it may have helped spur some positive change in the rules governing bad behavior. Continue reading
BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com
Originally published on October 16, 2002, 13 months after the 9/11 attacks.
The Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary defines the word “civilization” thus: An ideal state of human culture characterized by complete absence of barbarism and non-rational behavior.
In the United States, we pretend to live our entire lives in a constant “State of Positive Assumptions.” The central assumption is we DO live in a country “characterized by complete absence of barbarism and non-rational behavior.” Continue reading
BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com
Here we go again.
On my morning walk with my dog I saw the Capitol Police friend of mine. We both shook our heads at the events that happened in Boston. Here we go again, we both said.
More overtime is in the future for him. More insecurity for me and my family.
We don’t know who set off the bombs in Boston. It could have been a Saudi National. That was the early speculation. It could have been a home-grown Continue reading
BY GARY JOHNSON
Reprinted from Loose Change (TCBMag.com)
The release of the much-anticipated movie, Texas Chainsaw 3D, hit theaters last week. I could hardly contain my excitement, imagining myself lounging in one of those cushy theater seats with a bin of buttered popcorn watching a masked serial killer slice and dice (in 3-D yet!) people’s bodies up like he’s carving up a sculpture at the St. Paul Winter Carnival. And, be still my heart, to hear the bones crack and the victims scream in Dolby THX Sensaround! Yes! Apparently a lot of folks saw it the same way, because Texas Chainsaw 3D was last week’s number one box office hit.
Do you suppose those millions of people forgot that just three weeks ago the Sandy Hook elementary school had its own version of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre? Continue reading
BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com
I like Bob Costas. I like how he presents himself. I actually got a chance to meet him on the set of a show we did together, and he came across as a very reasonable, slightly conservative, well put-together guy. He is also a sports nut, who could tell you the lineup of the 1964 Cardinals.
I like sports, but I couldn’t remember the lineup of my favorite team of all time, the South Side Hit Men, who almost won the pennant in 1977. I could get a few of them, but my memory is not good enough to recite the whole line-up.
Bob Costas stepped in it the other day when he talked about gun control at half time of the Sunday Night Football game. He pissed off a lot of conservatives, who found it completely inappropriate to mix politics and sports. Continue reading