{"id":14170,"date":"2004-05-12T19:21:00","date_gmt":"2004-05-12T19:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.driko.org\/blog\/2004\/05\/12\/another-brilliant-congressman-from-california\/"},"modified":"2004-05-12T19:21:00","modified_gmt":"2004-05-12T19:21:00","slug":"another-brilliant-congressman-from-california","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.driko.org\/blog\/2004\/05\/12\/another-brilliant-congressman-from-california\/","title":{"rendered":"Another Brilliant Congressman from California"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The story: A concerned constituent, Mr. Daniel Dow of the California 13th District, wrote his congressman an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ksfo.com\/listingsentryfeature.asp?ID=209279&amp;PT=KSFO+Spotlight\" target=\"_blank\">intelligent, thoughtful letter<\/a> to express his disappointment regarding a particular vote on a resolution supporting the troops, but condemming the recent prisoner abuse scandal in Iraq. The congressman, Pete Stark (D-CA) personally called the constituent back, leaving a decidedly <a href=\"http:\/\/images.radcity.net\/5152\/663017.wav\" target=\"_blank\">less-than-eloquent response<\/a> (.WAV format). In it, he told the constituent, &ldquo;you don&rsquo;t know what you&rsquo;re talking about&rdquo;, &ldquo;I doubt if you could spell half the words in the letter and somebody wrote it for you&rdquo;, and he implied that Mr. Dow, a veteran Staff Sgt. recently returned from Kosovo, doesn&rsquo;t care about the enlisted troops in our armed forces.<\/p>\n<p>Now, I think it&rsquo;s pretty cool that someone from that level of office would take the time and the interest to personally call a constituent to discuss an issue, but&hellip; Maybe he could have expressed something other than utter contempt for an individual that he is supposedly there to represent? There was no, &ldquo;I appreciate your opinion, but felt it best to vote the way I did and here&rsquo;s why&rdquo;, or anything constructive or even democratic about it. It kinda makes you wonder why we need to be &ldquo;represented&rdquo; at all, if this is the level of service we can expect.<\/p>\n<div class=\"blogger-post-footer\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https:\/\/blogger.googleusercontent.com\/tracker\/3501955-108439211181850383?l=www.driko.org%2Findex_blogger.html\" alt=\"\" \/><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The story: A concerned constituent, Mr. Daniel Dow of the California 13th District, wrote his congressman an intelligent, thoughtful letter to express his disappointment regarding a particular vote on a resolution supporting the troops, but condemming the recent prisoner abuse scandal in Iraq. The congressman, Pete Stark (D-CA) personally called the constituent back, leaving a &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.driko.org\/blog\/2004\/05\/12\/another-brilliant-congressman-from-california\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Another Brilliant Congressman from California&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[118],"class_list":["post-14170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-imported"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.driko.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14170","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.driko.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.driko.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.driko.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.driko.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14170"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.driko.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14170\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.driko.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.driko.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.driko.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}