Barely Representative Jack Kingston Ain't No Ripken

I always used to smile when they described Cal Ripken Jr. as the "Iron Man." Now, don't get me wrong, his onsecutive game streak was impressive. But, hey, he worked from February to October, maybe November if he was lucky. The earliest salary I got for him was in 1985, when he made $800,000 for eight months work, which might make it easier to get up in the morning.

He is going to the Hall of Fame. He was a great player.

http://www.baseball-reference.com/r/ripkeca01.shtml

But the Iron Men (metaphorically, just sounds better than "Iron People") that I think of are the guys and gals who work 50 weeks a year, five or six days a week, laying pipe, or even in an office, or out on the road, or in a police station or a firehouse. And they ain't making $800,000. And then there are those men andwomen who had to leave their families behind to serve in Iraq or Afghanistan.

And then there are the folks in Washington who sent them there.

House majority leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) is makingthe members of the House of Representatives work a five-day week. Five whole days a week. The response?

Jack Kingston (R-Ga.), says "Keeping us up here eats away at families. Marriages suffer. The Democrats could care less about families, that's what this says."

Time away from Washington is just as important tobeing an effective member
of Congress as time spent in the Capitol, said Rep. Jack Kingston, R-Ga.
"When I'm here, people call me Mr. Congressman. When I'm home, people call
me 'Jack you stupid SOB why did you vote that way?' It keeps me
grounded."

Really? You had me at "stupid SOB." How about all those folks you and your friends sent to Iraq? Was that an "anti-family" action?

This isn't new for representative Kingston. Accordingto the Chicago Sun Times, in 1998 Kingston said, "You can't be in Washington five days a week and service your district. I'm just enough of a populist to believe that the real action is on the streets of America and not in Washington."

Here is an editorial from the Washington Post

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/06/AR2006120601780.html

The 109th Congress will have been in session for agrand total of 103 days
this year, which, as Lyndsey Layton pointed out in yesterday's Post, is seven
days fewer than the "Do-Nothing Congress" of 1948. Anordinary full-time worker
with a generous four weeks of vacation would have clocked 240 days of work
duringthat same period.

... they need time to campaign and to grub for campaign cash. But it's
undeniable that the time lawmakers spend in the capital, actually legislating,
has been on a downward path for the past few decades. According to the American
Enterprise Institute's Norman Ornstein, the average number of days in session
for a two-year Congress has dropped from 323 in the 1960s and '70s to just 250
during the first six yearsof the Bush presidency.

Eats away at families? Gee, Mr. Kingston, they could move here. And, we
wonder: Where, exactly, did you think the Capitol was when you ran for this
job?