squidpants

so the other day on C-SPAN, the House was debating about giving Washington, DC a vote in Congress - currently, it has none. Texas Republican Louie Gohmert made the argument that DC doesn't need a voting member, because all of the 435 members represent the District.

He said "I would submit to you that Washington, D.C. is also the only city in the entire country that every Senator and every Member of Congress has a vested interest in seeing that it works properly, that water works, sewer works, and no other city in America has that."

Wow! This is ludicrous, so the staff DCist.com (me included) were furious and ran a post saying that since he made this claim, he is thus the person we should call when we have any problem with the city - trash not being picked up, loud people late at night, etc etc. He's been bombarbed with calls, and I urge everybody else to do the same thing. I have a big bag of leaves that's been in front of my house for months, for example. I should call my new congressman and see what he can do.

The New Orleans Times-Picayune also wrote about the shenanigans.

Here's the DCist post, the comments are hilarious
(C-SPAN misidentified him at first, it's really Gohmert)

And Gohmert's phone : 202-225-3035

And Gohmert's page