Who Elects These People?

by hilzoy

Now is the time for all good men and women to come to the aid of their country; and if you happen to be from the US, you could do a lot worse than sending a campaign contribution to Joe Sestak. He's running against Curt Weldon, who is, in my completely unprofessional opinion, just the sort of lunatic we do not need in Congress. Many of you have probably seen the story about Rep. Curt Weldon's attempt to discover WMD in Iraq as a campaign stunt (h/t TPMMuckraker):

"A caravan of jeeps and heavy equipment crawls across the Iraqi desert, headed for a secret location on the banks of the Euphrates River.
Their mission: to dig 25 feet down into the riverbed and unearth concrete bunkers filled with chemical weapons produced by Saddam Hussein's regime and hidden before the outbreak of the Iraq war in 2003.

And who's that, dressed in a safari jacket and a pith helmet, supervising the dig?

None other than our own U.S. Rep. Curt Weldon (R., Pa.), leading a secret mission to unearth the Holy Grail of the war: the weapons of mass destruction that have eluded every other U.S. search team since our troops invaded three years ago.

Does this sound incredible - or ludicrous? Not to Dave Gaubatz.
Gaubatz said that Weldon intended just such an expedition over the Memorial Day weekend, until Gaubatz put the kibosh on it. (...)

Gaubatz said he first contacted Weldon and Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R., Mich.), head of the House Intelligence Committee, to share his info and get them to prod the Defense Department and intelligence agencies to do the WMD searches in the locales.

Instead, Gaubatz said, Weldon latched onto the idea as a "personal political venture" and discussed a Hoekstra-Weldon trip to Iraq, under the guise of visiting the troops, that would detour to Nasiriyah.

Once there, Gaubatz said, the congressmen planned to persuade the U.S. military commander to lend them the equipment and men to go digging by the Euphrates for the cache Gaubatz believed to be there.

He said that Weldon made it clear he didn't want word leaked to the Pentagon, to intelligence officials, or to Democratic congressmen.

As Gaubatz told me: "They even worked out how it would go. If there was nothing there, nothing would be said. If the site had been [scavenged], nothing would be said. But, if it was still there, they would bring the press corps out." (...)

"It was treated as an election issue that would get votes," he said. "I've never been involved in politics, so it was a very big eye-opener to me." (...)

After the meeting, he said, he called a reporter at the Washington Times and alerted her of the plan. In turn, he said, she called Weldon's office to get confirmation. That inquiry, Gaubatz said, scuttled the project."

Curt Weldon is really a piece of work. In fact, it's amazing how many stories that I had filed away under 'Congresspeople being bizarre as usual' turned out to be stories about Weldon. For starters...

there's his participation in the coronation (yes, coronation) of Sun Myung Moon in the Dirksen Senate Office Building. At that event, Moon said that “Hitler and Stalin have found strength in my teachings, mended their ways and been reborn as new persons.” (Before or after the purges, concentration camps, gulags, and final solutions? Inquiring minds want to know.) Apparently, he added this: "In a vision, Moon said the reformed Hitler and Stalin vouched for him, calling him "none other than humanity's Savior, Messiah, Returning Lord and True Parent."

Quite a testimonial.

Curt Weldon's staff denied that he had been at the coronation until they were shown this photo of him speaking at the coronation, at which point they had to fess up:

Yes, that is Moammar Qaddafi having a medal pinned on him by Curt Weldon. That brings us to the next point: Weldon's alarming fondness for undertaking freelance personal diplomacy to the world's dictators. For the record: obviously, I have no problem with non-governmental officials acting in a semi-official capacity when the government does not want to be directly involved. (The sort of thing that involves someone supposedly traveling to some country on his or her own initiative, but checking everything very carefully with the government first, and acting at the government's behest.) But if the alarmed statements by government officials that normally accompany Weldon's little forays are anything to go by, that's not what's going on here. He's just jetting off into the middle of various tense conflicts and freelancing. And that's really not a good idea for an official of the US government.

For instance: In the middle of the war in Kosovo, Weldon led a group of opponents of the war who met with members of the Russian Duma and produced a peace plan all their own, over the objections of the State Department. As one Congressman said: "legislators would have been branded as traitors had they tried to negotiate a settlement with Russia in the Persian Gulf War of 1991-92."

More recently, Weldon has visited North Korea (he tried to go again, but Condi Rice pulled the plug on that trip.) Here's TNR's Michael Crowley on Weldon in Pyongyang:

"When Weldon asked for a military plane to make the trip, Defense Department officials claimed none was available. "They were saying, 'They're going to manipulate and use you,'" Weldon says. Weldon managed to wrangle a plane from a National Guard base in his district and departed with a delegation of six fellow congressmen. When the group reached Hawaii for a scheduled crew replacement, however, the replacement pilots were nowhere to be found: They had been told the mission was off. (Weldon says he knows who in Washington recalled the crew, but he won't say.) "Now, that's one thing you don't do to me. I'm a pit bull," Weldon says. After angry calls to Powell and Andy Card, the trip was back on. 

In Pyongyang, Weldon was welcomed by such iconography as a billboard showing North Korean soldiers bayoneting American GIs. But his visit with senior North Korean leaders--not including President Kim Jong Il--brimmed with bonhomie. "We treated them like human beings, like members of Congress," Weldon says. "We slapped each other on the back, we told jokes, we made them do shots with us." Inspired during a fit of insomnia in his hotel room one night, Weldon flipped on a light at 3 a.m. and scrawled a ten-point peace plan onto the back of an envelope. He presented it to North Korea's vice foreign minister the next day. "He looked at me with a big smile on his face and said, 'Congressman, this is exactly what we're looking for,'" Weldon said. 

That, in the eyes of Bush hawks, is precisely the problem. Weldon's plan calls for incremental concessions by both the United States and North Korea, leading to an end to North Korea's nuclear and missile programs in return for a U.S. nonaggression pledge and up to $40 billion in international economic aid. "Most Republicans are flabbergasted he would make this proposal," says the Republican foreign policy aide"

I'm flabbergasted too, not because of anything about the proposal itself -- the description is much too vague to allow for that -- but because, according to me, Congressional representatives just shouldn't go around making proposals like that without very serious coordination with the State Department (and any other relevant agencies.)

Besides interjecting himself into Kosovo and North Korea, he has also gone on little jaunts to meet with Qaddafi, Lukashenko of Belarus, and all sorts of delightful people in Russia. He was also at the center of the Able Danger story -- if you could make head or tail of it, you're a lot smarter than I am, but my fairly clear sense was that Weldon was infatuated by conspiracy theories, and ended up very seriously overstating both his case and the evidence he had for it.

At least, that's the charitable version. I didn't pay much attention to it, since a few months before the story broke, I was stuck in a traffic jam in DC and spent the better part of an hour listening to Weldon talk about his book. By the time I got out of DC and onto the 95, I had concluded that Weldon was, um, not someone whose judgment I was inclined to trust. At all. And that was before I found out that the book was based on one source, a friend (and, apparently, emissary) of Manucher Ghorbanifar. (For those of you who don't remember Iran-Contra, trust me: Ghorbanifar is bad, bad news.) Here's one of the CIA officials who had already determined Weldon';s source to be unreliable on Weldon's book:

"What’s far more important, says Murray, is that Weldon’s freelance 007 crusade to be his own spymaster has ultimately done a disservice to the American people and to national security.

“Most of us [CIA officers] have been consumed with preventing real terrorist threats to the U.S. for the past four years,” he said with a fierce squint. “And virtually everything Ghorbanifar and his people come up with diverts us. I have hard-working people working for me, and they don’t have time for this bullsh*t.”"

But wait! There's more!

* Weldon's inexperienced daughter keeps getting hired as a lobbyist by people her father then turns around and does favors for. What's more, some of them are linked to war criminals.

* After Weldon went to bat for another company, it turned around and hired his other daughter.

* Weldon has spent campaign contributions on dinners for himself, landscaping (landscaping? a campaign expense?), and "some $13,000 in unitemized personal reimbursements."

* And who could forget Weldon's tasteful attack on his opponent's decision not to get treatment for his five year old daughter, who has cancer, in Pennsylvania?

"Weldon also suggested Sestak should have sent his daughter to a hospital in Philadelphia or Delaware, rather than the Washington hospital."

Beating up on someone for his choice of an oncologist for his five year old child: that's what I call class.

***

Weldon, like Duke Cunningham before him, is not someone we should have running loose in our government. His opponent, Joe Sestak, is a good guy: a recently retired vice admiral with good positions on the issues. He would deserve our support even if he were not running against a certified loon. Since he is, supporting him is a no-brainer. Like Weldon himself.

Comments

[kvenlander]

How come that Moonie coronation didn't lose him the election in 2004? Did he have an opponent? Did the opponent have a campaign? How come the media didn't spend weeks discussing proper use of government buildings? Or strange cults?

Oh, he's a Republican. That makes it OK.

[cleek]

i can't believe someone can't beat the pants off this guy in an election. just run that Moonie thing over and over, with the quote...

are people not even trying?

[liberal japonicus]

I've noted Weldon before with his theories about the CIA identifying Atta and others hijackers before 9-11 and wondered why he gets a pass on this kind of tinfoil stuff, but leftwing moonbat types don't. I find myself strangely pleased to see that Weldon is really a few sandwiches short of a picnic lunch

[Dantheman]

As a resident of the Philly suburbs (but fortunately not Weldon's district), all I can say is that Weldon's repeated re-elections (he's been in Congress since 1987) are the result of Delaware County being controlled by a Republican machine. Loony as he is, and impressive as Sestak's resume is, he is the most likely to survive of the endangered Republicans in the Philly suburbs.

[sglover]

Errrr.... I share the bewilderment of earlier posters. Dantheman actually makes it a tad worse -- I always figured Weldon was from one of those economically comatose districts in the center of the state. Is Weldon still likely to win, despite the sleaze, despite the apparent mental illness?

[sglover]

By the way, kvenlander, here in DC, the right-wingers know the Washington Times is a Moon organ, they know many of the spooky rituals and statements that Moon is prone to, and -- it doesn't matter. The Times reliably produces stories that reinforce orthodoxy.

[hilzoy]

anyone like the loon link?

[jaron]

the loon link is teh loony!

tahnks!

[seriously, it's a nice touch]

[Jesurgislac]

Dantheman: As a resident of the Philly suburbs (but fortunately not Weldon's district), all I can say is that Weldon's repeated re-elections (he's been in Congress since 1987) are the result of Delaware County being controlled by a Republican machine.

But if even senior Republicans can see that Weldon is a dangerous loon, why is he still getting the support of the Republican re-election machine?

[liberal japonicus]

Sorry, Hil, I didn't click on it cause I saw it was a wav file. However, the effort at multisensory posting is appreciated, as long as we keep clear of the olfactoric...

[David Weigel]

I live in Weldon's district, and it is indeed controlled by a Republican machine. Strangely, if you read only the local press, you'd never know he was wacky. Look at the Delco Times website and search for "Curt Weldon" for the last three months. his wackiness is scarcely mentioned. I count one article touching on it (relating to Ghorbanifar), and that's it. Even the two articles where Weldon claims that Iraq is rife with WMD only tell it from his point of view.

Why does he get re-elected? Because his constituents don't know who he really is, plus pork and power. Those were the grounds for the Delco Times endorsement last time around.

[Dantheman]

Jes,

"But if even senior Republicans can see that Weldon is a dangerous loon, why is he still getting the support of the Republican re-election machine?"

David's answer is a large part of it. Even the Philadelphia Inquirer (which hilzoy quoted at length and which has national pretensions) has only just started to notice his looniness, as I do not recall (for example) the Rev. Moon connection ever being reported there.

Also, remember that this is the local party machinery, not the national one. Weldon is one of the most senior members of it (with the other senior members content to hold county commissioner or judgeship offices).

[KCinDC]

"The 95"? What are you, a Californian? We don't use "the" with our highway numbers here on the East Coast.

Kvenlander, unfortunately there were some Democrats at the Moon coronation as well -- possibly connected with Moon's bizarrely successful campaign to get urban black churches to replace their crosses with Moon's crown. Nothing's happened to them either.

[hilzoy]

KCinDC: Oh. My. God. My nine years outside LA did leave a trace.

[liberal japonicus]

It always leaves a mark.

[kenB]

Wow, now I feel the urge to go through all of hilzoy's previous posts and see whether she speaks of "purses" or "pocketbooks", "tennis shoes" or "sneakers", "freeways" or "highways".

We're fighting a losing battle with our children to make them speak like the Californians they truly are somewhere deep inside, rather than like the Connecticutians they've spent their entire lives around. You should see us react with righteous fury when they pronounce "kitten" as /ki?in/ (i.e. with a glottal stop in the middle) instead of /kitn/.

[Ugh]

Administration loses Hamdan, from SCOTUSBlog:

The Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that Congress did not take away the Court's authority to rule on the military commissions' validity, and then went ahead to rule that President Bush did not have authority to set up the tribunals at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and found the "military commissions" illegal under both military justice law and the Geneva Convention. The vote was 5-3, with the Chief Justice not taking part.

[Debra Mervant]

KenB, these days when I find myself saying "motorway" rather than "highway" or "freeway" and "trainers" instead of "sneakers" or "tennis shoes" I measure just how transcontinental I've really become...

[SomeOtherDude]

Look at the stuff the Washington Times used to print about right-wingers in the 80's:

HOMOSEXUAL CHILD PROSTITUTION RING INVOLVING GEORGE BUSH SR.

http://tinyurl.com/626uc

I wonder what made them stop?

[Gary Farber]

I'll spare you the links to my old posts on Weldon and Moon, or any other old Weldon posts, but I do think that at least a passing mention of the Logan Act is missing from this discussion.

We have few more venerable laws, after all.

[Gary Farber]

"Errrr.... I share the bewilderment of earlier posters."

Look, our system is entirely broken. We don't have competitive elections, save in about 35 or fewer out of 435 districts.

We have less turnover than the Supreme Soviet or the Chinese Congress of People's Deputies ever had.

Period. End of story. It.s Broken.

But have some details.

n 1998, President Clinton's sixth-year election, just 33 House members out of 435 stepped down from their posts--many to seek another elected office such as a Senate seat or a Governorship. A mere seven U.S. Representatives lost their House seats through defeat, one in a primary and the other six in the general election. The overall reelection rate for House members seeking another term was 98 percent.

[...]

In 2002 [...] The reelection rate for House members plummeted from the 98 percent of 1998 all the way down to...96 percent.

This is why I wouldn't count on the Democrats retaking the House or Senate, much as I'd like to see it, much as it's hard not to get one's hopes up, much as the national climate may favor us.

The national climate is apt to be largely irrelevant.

The. System. Is. Broken.

Weldon is just a sympton. A lunatic, once in Congresss, is apt to be almost unable to be voted out. Senate, two. Look at Bunning and Coburn and....