Gotta love their classic pun of a headline:

“Name Calling is the Most Sincere Form of Slattery”

Funniest congressional joke since Jim Traficant.

And while we’re at it, after giving the mysterious folks who run FamousDC the Marc Twain, send them off on the Marc Train.

Date:  June 8, 2006

Location: Committee on Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation

Statement of R. Hunter Biden, Nominee, Member of the Amtrak Reform Board:

Mr. Chairman, members of the Committee, I am honored to appear before you today, and I am honored that President Bush has nominated me to be a member of the Amtrak Reform Board. Amtrak touches so many facets of so many Americans lives, and if confirmed, I look forward to working with the members of this Committee and the Congress to make sure that Amtrak continues to play that important role to so many people who rely on it daily. I see this appointment as a great opportunity to help turn around what can and must be a key component of our transportation system. Amtrak should be one of our success stories; right now it is one of our biggest challenges.

I believe that my experience in government, at the U.S. Department of Commerce working for both Secretary Daley and Secretary Mineta, and in the private sector, in both banking and the law has prepared me well for this position. At the same time, as a frequent commuter and Amtrak customer for over 30 years, I have literally logged thousands of miles on Amtrak. I hope that I can bring my perspective to the Board as one of the millions of customers who ride and depend upon Amtrak everyday. It has been through my experience as a customer that I have developed a deep respect for the organization and its employees, and I know how much they believe in and are committed to making Amtrak a safe and reliable service. It is also as a longtime Amtrak customer that I know first hand some of the many problems Amtrak faces as an organization.

Working together, I believe that members of the Board, members of Congress, the Administration and the employees of Amtrak can overcome many of the issues intercity rail faces today. If confirmed, I look forward to being a part of that discussion and look forward to the challenge. Amtrak is too important to our economy for it not to be in the best financial health possible. I take the fiduciary responsibility required by the members of the Board very seriously, and believe that above all else that the American people expect that it’s national rail system be run as safely, efficiently and cost-effectively as possible.

I also recognize that Amtrak affects, and is affected by, many of the most important issues of the day. In an era of mounting energy concerns in which driving a car is getting more and more expensive, intercity rail must be part of the solution. A healthy national passenger rail system can provide millions of commuters with a reliable and hopefully cost-effective alternative to other forms of transportation. In addition, I believe that in the 21st Century a robust, cost efficient national passenger rail system is a necessity, and that you can not look at the energy and environmental issues facing our country today without looking at intercity rail and Amtrak as a part of the solution.

Finally, if confirmed, I particularly look forward to working with the members of this Committee and the Congress to ensure that Amtrak is an integral part of our homeland security strategy. I believe that it is imperative that Amtrak work closely with federal and local law enforcement to make sure that our commuter rail system is safe from terrorist attack.

I hope to have the opportunity to work with the members of this Committee and the Congress to solve some of these challenges facing Amtrak.

Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you and I welcome any questions the Committee may have.

And then he got to wear the family crown…

An announcement from one of the best causes around — America Supports You:

Remember 9/11. Participate in the America Supports You Freedom Walk

The seventh anniversary of 9/11 is fast approaching. How will you commemorate this day? Here’s one way: Join thousands of Americans in the annual America Supports You (ASY) Freedom Walk.

Created in 2005, the walk is an occasion to reflect on the events and meaning of September 11th—to commemorate the lives lost, to honor our troops and their families, and to renew our commitment to freedom and the values of our country. Here are the details.

National Walk

The 4th annual national ASY Freedom Walk will begin at 9:00 AM EST on Sunday, September 7, 2008, at the Women’s Memorial in Arlington National Cemetery, and will finish at the Pentagon South Parking lot. The total distance is about one mile, after which the Grammy-winning Oak Ridge Boys will perform a tribute. Click here to sign-up now.

Local Walk

If you have friends or family who live outside the DC area, you can encourage them to participate in one of the more than 230 local walks taking place in communities across the country, beginning the week of September 11th. Click here to find a local walk.

Boo Stephen Hunter!  As Teddy Roosevelt fans, we couldn’t help but be outraged by what the kill-joy writes in his Washington Post piece on the Nationals today:

The presidents’ race. You know, those four big-headed dweebs in their 1892 vaudeville shtick of faww-down-go-boom before every game! They stumble in from the outfield and stagger to a clearly scripted finish near the Nats dugout. It’s always the same, it’s never funny, it’s weirdly dismissive. I mean, if the city is known for anything, it’s known for the seriousness with which the game of politics is played. It’s a hard-knock, prisoners-will-be-shot milieu, so why is it dissed and turned into stooge’s comedy? The race is just as certainly disrespectful to those great men, Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt, who gave and fought and risked. Now they’re represented as spindly bodies without knee-joints sustaining gigantic alien heads that seem drawn not from history but from Japanese anime.

They are the worst attributes of modern marketing: cute, harmless, without mythology or morphology, charmless, awkward, silly, sexless and pointless. They belong on lunchboxes, and connect not with the grand parade of tragedy and triumph that is both America and baseball but with things like Alvin and the Chipmunks, bad CGI movies, gnomes and Beanie Babies. Cute is scarier than death. Watching them makes my teeth hurt, my head ache.

Wanna give the spoil-sport more hurtful teeth and a more severely aching head?  Then watch this…

Then consider the day a panther attacked Teddy.

Hey, Stephen Hunter, still think that’s not funny?  It’s hilarious!

Last night at the convention …

… first done by the Reagans,1984 Dallas convention

UPDATE:

The painfully obvious about Joe Biden is confirmed:

Before flying to Denver, he made an appearance at the Wilmington, Del., Amtrak station that the Obama campaign has worked hard to make part of the narrative surrounding Biden in recent days.

Worked hard?  Never realized how tough it is to power a narrative around one of the most significant taxpayer-subsidized government programs around.

Unless, of course, you consider past dramatic experiences with trains.

Like this …

Or this …

Or even this …

All leading to AMTRAK’s day of wreck-oning.

Hill headline:

“Carter won’t speak at Dem convention”

Pity.  Well, maybe he can watch with his buddies.

Why should Americans everywhere rejoice David Folkenflik, rather than, say, Michael Phelps or Joe Biden?

Because of sensational, insightful, and entrepreneurial reporting like this in his NPR.org column “Media Circus”:

I’d like to suggest that it’s time we judge outlets by what they actually do rather than the means by which they arrive. Do they make you smarter? Challenge your assumptions? Reveal things you didn’t know? Help you evaluate candidates and parties more shrewdly?

Take The Politico. It provides well-reported dispatches by and for Washington insiders and political junkies. Extreme Mortman provides the musings of a funny conservative. The TPMMuckraker is liberal, but it does real reporting.

Here’s a picture of the American treasure, and for once we don’t mean ourselves…

Steny Hoyer for president?  Can’t 2012 or 2016 come any faster?

Consider the Boston Globe:

One indicator of the optimism Democrats hold about their prospects this year: the Iowa delegation’s daily breakfasts — typically a routine stop on the itineraries of those planning a future presidential candidacy — are being addressed by national party figures unlikely to be rehearsing a stump speech for an upcoming Iowa State Fair.

In Monday, delegates had a visit from Senator Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota freshman. Later in the week, Illinois Senator Dick Durbin and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer are scheduled to speak.

Extreme Mortman senior historian Richard Andrews brings us up-to-date about David Broder and 1956:

In the one of his videos on Washingtonpost.com/postpoliticstv (partly transcribed on p.A27 of today’s Post), Broder says LBJ helped make Estes Kefauver the VP nominee in ‘56.  WRONG!  LBJ supported JFK to the bitter end; one of LBJ’s best known pre-Presidential utterances was his casting Texas’ votes for “the fighting sailor who wears the scars of battle”.  I have this here in Caro’s “Master of the Senate” book, and there are online references, too.

D’oh!