Heard on the Hill: Our Favorite Filing, Ever
Roll Call Staff
Former Rep. William Jefferson (D-La.) has maintained a low profile since losing his re-election bid last year, but he recently filed a legal motion to force the government to return his seized property, including a T-shirt picturing fellow embattled former Rep. James Traficant (Ohio).
Except it actually wasn’t Jefferson who filed the motion at all — it was convicted felon Jonathan Lee Riches, who argued he is, in fact, Jefferson.
Jailed since 2003 after pleading guilty to charges related to an identity theft ring, Riches has whiled away the hours in prison filing thousands of lawsuits and court motions (usually handwritten) against, well, basically anything he can think of. Riches once alleged Elvis Presley stole his sideburns; in another, he argued half his brain had been stolen at Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory and sold on eBay.
Riches recently filed a motion with the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia moving to name himself as Jefferson’s attorney. And that’s not all — he also moved to “correct a clerical ERROR” and have the court case altered to be formally against “William J. Jefferson a/k/a/ Jonathan Lee Riches.”
Riches then asked the court to return property that had been seized by the government, including: a “whirlpool freezer,” “mardi gras hats & buttons,” a “Back to Africa Dvd,” “Fannie Mae stock,” a “Mark Foley mask,” “Swanson T.V. Dinners,” “Green Giant Peas,” “Katrina driftwood,” “African Pride shampoo,” “laxatives,” “Viagra,” “photos of me and Senator Ted Stevens Fly fishing” and “photos of me and Jack Abramoff eating at Church’s Chicken.”
Not surprisingly, Judge T.S. Ellis III threw out Riches’ motions, and banned the court from accepting any more like it.
We just hope someone gets that Traficant T-shirt back.
Gibbs Is Pretty in Pink. Not that we haven’t been paying attention to what comes out of Robert Gibbs’ mouth (stimulus, blah, blah), but honestly, HOH’s attention has been focused a few inches lower, on the White House press secretary’s neckties.
In his first two weeks on the job, he’s given us a veritable Easter parade of Easter-egg colors on display behind the briefing room podium. We’ve seen powder blue, two yellows, two pinks, two purples, a green stripe, and what we could only describe as periwinkle — but not a single traditional bright red or blue power tie among them.
There was a navy cravat on Jan. 29 (yes, we’ve been keeping a Robert Gibbs Tie Diary), but we’ll chalk that up to anomaly.
And that’s welcome news for some fashion-watchers around town bored to tears by the usual reds and blues. Ethan Drath, owner of Georgetown menswear emporium Sherman Pickey, applauds Gibbs’ unconventional choices. “It’s great to see so much color, and I’m always in favor of shaking up the traditional Washington look,” he told HOH.
Drath wouldn’t buy into the temptation to psychoanalyze Gibbs’ neckwear choices. “You could think that, ‘Oh, he’s wearing softer colors, he’s trying to be friendly to the media,’” he said. “Or, maybe he wears them because he’s deferring, in a sense, but I don’t think it’s that conscious.”
His Southern roots — Gibbs hails from Alabama — might also explain the candy colors. Southern men are more comfortable in pastels, Drath said.
You have to admire a guy who, although he’s engaged in verbal combat with some of the toughest questioners in the news business, isn’t afraid to wear pink.
Brownback, Payne Get Hipster Stamp of Approval. Sen. Sam Brownback isn’t exactly the type of guy you’d expect to nab a compliment from bona fide rock stars, but the guys from the band Good Charlotte gave the Kansas Republican definite props on Wednesday.
Bandmates (and twins) Joel and Benji Madden were on Capitol Hill to lobby Brownback and Reps. Donald Payne (D-N.J.), Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) and Brad Miller (D-N.C.) about “conflict minerals,” materials such as tantalum that are mined in the Congo and used in electronic devices sold in the United States — with profits funding war in Central Africa.
Baucus: We Must Reform Health Care Now
March 8, 12 a.m.
Ten years ago, Dan DeJong, a fourth-generation rancher from just outside Libby, Mont., was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Dan worked hard all his life, but when faced with massive bills to treat his cancer, Dan and his wife, Pat, had no choice but to sell the family’s land and apply for Medicaid and food stamps. Read Full Article
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