ouch

ok. i looked up that house speech from 2 days ago that i mentioned yesterday.

do you know what a bitch it is to find something in the congressional record?

it's a cgi file, which must be like pdf, 'cause you need adobe acrobat to view it, with all its usual difficulties.

i found out something interesting on the way: the congressional record doesn't have the official proceedings of the house. the house journal is the real thing.

trouble is the online version is hopelessly behind schedule. i mean it's not even up to this century yet. literally. we're talkin' 1999, folks.

so i went to the congressional record for 3/15/06. fortunately i knew the congressman's name: conaway (r-tx).

i had to look at 70 pages, one at a time, before i found it. talk about archaic. haven't they heard of plain text? what a guvmint.

here's a little bit of the speech:

...it is hypocritical of us to, on the one hand, ask the taxpayers of this country to underwrite the high energy bills, and then, on the other hand, restrict supply that, in fact, drives up those costs. So my amendment would say that none of the LIHEAP money would be available as long as we maintain restrictions on drilling in ANWR as well as the outer continental shelf.

talk about hypocrisy, eh? drill more or punish the poor.

if you want to read the rest, go to page H1047.

we can thank tom delay for this jerk, btw. he's a freshman from the new 11th district created by the gerrymander "the hammer" engineered.