House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, the two Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill, have been chosen to receive the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Distinguished Public Service Award at a Washington gala on Wednesday celebrating the 75th anniversary of the New Deal.
The New Deal was launched during FDR's first 100 days in office, when Congress passed 15 major pieces of legislation to meet the crisis of the Great Depression.
Readers will recall that Mrs. Pelosi widely touted her first "100 hours," but not so much her first "100 days" in power. Once the latter milestone was reached, 70 percent of Americans contacted in one survey could not identify anything significant the 110th Congress had accomplished.
Pheasant stew
Now that he is no longer seeking the White House, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee has agreed to be keynote speaker for this summer's Shooting Sports Summit in Colorado Springs.
An avid outdoorsman, Mr. Huckabee ingratiated himself with Iowans the day after Christmas when he grabbed a 12-gauge shotgun and went pheasant hunting. He bagged not only a bird but also eventually 35 percent of the state's caucus votes — easily beating the rest of the Republican field, including the presumptive nominee John McCain. He finished fourth with 13 percent of the Jan. 3 vote.
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who came in second in Iowa, tried telling voters that he, too, was a lifelong hunter, although he acknowledged later that he had hunted only a few times and did not own a gun.
The June 23-25 summit is sponsored by the National Shooting Sports Foundation.
Sticklers
In Wednesday's column, we had Sen. Jon Kyl, Arizona Republican, criticizing the majority of college freshmen and seniors who didn't know "that Yorktown brought the Revolutionary War to an end."
Indeed, most historians will tell you that the Battle of Yorktown, when Lord Cornwallis surrendered to George Washington, effectively ended the Revolutionary War.
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