The Right Coast |
|
|
Thoughts from San Diego on Law, Politics, and Culture
Right Coasters
Gail Heriot Saikrishna Prakash Michael Rappaport Maimon Schwarzschild Thomas Smith Christopher Wonnell Email Us Gail Heriot Saikrishna Prakash Michael Rappaport Maimon Schwarzschild Thomas Smith Christopher Wonnell Links Andrew Sullivan Atlantic Blog The Buck Stops Here Corporate Law Blog Crescat Sententia Crooked Timber Curmudgeonly Clerk Daniel Drezner En Banc EveTushnet.Com FreeSpace How Appealing Instapundit Law and Econ Blog Little Green Footballs Legal Theory Blog The Leiter Reports Marginal Revolution Overlawyered Pejmanesque ProfBainbridge.Com Punishment Theory Rasmusen Weblog SFA Politics & Relig Southern Appeal SpoonsExperience USS Clueless The Volokh Conspiracy The Yin Blog Archives The Bear Flag League Aaron's Rantblog (LA) Absinthe & Cookies Accidental Jedi (Fres) Angry Clam (LA) Baldilocks BlogoSFERICS (Expat) BoifromTroy (LA) CalBlog (Los Angeles) California Republic Citizen Smash(SD) Cobb (Los Angeles) Daily Pundit (SF) Dale Franks e-Claire(Northern CA) Fresh Potatoes(Orang) Infinite Monkeys The Interocitor (LA) The Irish Lass (Sacra) Left Coast Conserv. Lex Communis (Fres) Master of None (LA) Miller's Time (Sac) Molly's Musings (SD) Mulatto Boy (LA) Howard Owens (Vent) Pathetic Earthlings) Patio Pundit Patterico's Pontifications(LA) PrestoPundit (Orange) QandO Right on the Left Beach Shark Blog (Expat) Slings and Arrows (SD) So. Cal Law Blog (LA) Tone Cluster Window Manager Xrlq (Orange) 
|
May 24, 2004
Moral tone on the Hill By Tom Smith I guess I really am a prude. I admit I find this Senate staffers blog shocking, and am relieved to discover that she can be fired without violating her rights. It would be an exaggeration to say I found DC or the White House a moral cesspool when I was there, but let's say you wouldn't want to drink the water either. The best I can do (with one exception I don't feel like relating now) was a long meeting I had to sit through on the design of some stupid prize for American Industry the Reagan administration came up with. It eventually was legislated and became another few million of taxpayers' money wasted -- a rounding error. Anyway, my boss had to 'coordinate' with some other semi-big shot from OMB or somewhere. He literally looked like a revived corpse. He had the last stages of cancer or something. His assistant was this drop dead gorgeous blonde woman stupider than anyone I have met since high school. Once you go to college, you just don't meet people that stupid, let alone try to craft federal programs with them. When I pointed out things like, important innovations in the pharmaceuticals industry were not likely to come from lone inventors in garages, she would pout, and look at daddy like, "stop this man from being mean to me." It was very, very weird. Then her boss Dracula tried to get me in trouble with my boss for treating her like the idiot she was. Call me naive, but I thought it was wrong to piss away the public's money, even if it was only a few million, just so Nosferatu could get lucky with little Miss Anna Nicole Wonk-Smith. Yet, a few blocks away there were folks in the Justice Department worrying about what James Madison really thought about the foreign affairs power. Washington is a really weird place. |