U.S. House Speaker John Boehner said he would welcome Mark Sanford “with open arms” into his party’s House ranks.

Then he said members of Congress don’t get to choose those with whom they serve.

Where I come from, that’s what I call “damning with faint praise.”

http://thehill.com/homenews/house/298183-boehner-on-sanford-house-members-dont-get-to-choose-their-colleagues

Sanford is the former South Carolina governor who once served in the House. He’s running for the First Congressional District seat against Democratic challenger Elizabeth Colbert Busch. The race is neck and neck, or so they say.

It’s close because the First District is as reliably Republican as, say, the 13th District of Texas. Colbert Busch has a chance of winning the seat against Sanford, who you’ll recall left the governorship after his much-publicized dalliance with his Argentine girlfriend. He lied about where he was, saying he was hiking in the woods when he was in Argentina doing whatever.

It’s oh, so seedy.

But here he is, trying to climb back into the arena.

First District South Carolinians are voting today whether to send this clown back to public office or entrust their interests to a newcomer. My proverbial money is on the new kid, who I hope sends Sanford backpacking.

Maybe this time he’ll really hike the Appalachian Trail.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, R-N.J., has revealed that he had weight-loss surgery done in February.

He did it for his family, the governor said. OK, let’s not question that statement’s face value. Perhaps he did.

I am thinking, though, he had some other folks in mind as well.

http://www.today.com/news/nj-gov-chris-christie-reveals-he-underwent-weight-loss-surgery-6C9814050

Say, maybe the Americans who’ll be voting in the 2016 presidential election?

Christie burst onto the national scene three years ago when he defeated Democrat Jon Corzine to become the Garden State’s governor. He’s a blunt, garrulous lawyer/politician who took the national political stage by storm almost immediately. He’s chastised regular folks for asking what he deems to be inappropriate questions. Christie also has fired back at TV talking heads and has made zero apologies for the way he has done his job.

The governor also is more than a tad overweight. And in this image-conscious age, appearances do matter.

Thus, he had the surgery to take some of the pounds off his ample frame.

Yes, the governor’s health is an issue and he should do it for his wife and children. My hunch is that Gov. Christie is addressing other people’s concerns as well.

Politics – and chiefly its practitioners – tend to cheapen certain words and even occasionally values.

Take the word “friend,” for example.

How many times has one heard the word “friend” used to describe a congressional colleague when the person who tosses the word out likely cannot stand the sight of the person who he or she has just described.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., may have done it the other day in talking about Republican colleague Ted Cruz of Texas.

http://thehill.com/video/senate/298051-reid-calls-cruz-a-schoolyard-bully

The use of that word in such a seemingly cavalier fashion bugs the daylights out of me.

I don’t know either of these two men, although I’ve read enough about them over the years to know plenty about them. Maybe they’re best pals, but I rather doubt it. Reid tossed the “friend” label at Cruz while saying on the Senate floor that the freshman Texas senator acts like a “schoolyard bully” on budget matters.

Over my more than six decades on this Earth, I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of people I can call “friend.” I have been careful for many years not to use the word to describe individuals with whom I have friendly relationships but who don’t qualify as “friend.”

How do I describe a friend? He or she is someone – other than a spouse of a member of your immediate family – to whom you can say anything. These are individuals who you love unconditionally and who are there for you through thick and thin. Two of the individuals on my short list of friends go back with me a very long time; one of them goes back to the seventh grade.

So when I hear the word “friend” thrown around the way Harry Reid did on the Senate floor, I just shrug and maybe chuckle to myself. He’s not telling the truth.  He has cheapened a once-valuable word.

There must be something wrong with me.

I have this love/hate relationship with a piece of electronic equipment. I hate the thing, but I cannot live without it.

You know what I’m talking about. It’s the cellphone that goes with me everywhere.

I need to stipulate that I have one of those “ancient” flip-top phones. No smartie-pants phone for me, at least not yet. My little gadget does what I need it to do: It makes phone calls; it receives them; it tells me when I miss a call; it gives me the phone number to call back – if I want to talk that person; it does receive text messages (and if I felt like learning how to send one of those messages back, I would, but I so far have resisted the temptation).

When I take my cellphone out of my pocket, I receive strange looks from my younger friends and colleagues, and from family members who’ve “updated” their status to the smart phones, I-phones, the things that can tuck you in at night – after singing a lullaby. One friend looked at my Samsung and said, “Hey, that looks like my first cell phone.” Then he laughed out loud, with the slightest hint of derision.

Having declared my love/hate relationship with this phone, I want to add one critical caveat. I will not, as one of my former colleagues once admitted, go back home to fetch it if I manage to leave it behind. My ex-colleague even admitted to me that he would leave his driver’s license at home – but not his cellphone. “So,” I asked my friend, Brad, “you would rather break the law by driving without your driver’s license in your possession than go through your day without your cellphone. Is that right?” Brad said he would.

I won’t go there, I told him. And do not even get me started by mentioning those who drive their motor vehicles while blabbing on one of those devices.

But I do find the phone increasingly indispensable to my daily routine – even though I hate it.

The Texas Railroad Commission has taken another step toward a new identity.

It’s about time.

http://www.texastribune.org/2013/05/02/texas-railroad-commission-sunset-bill-passes-senat/

Senate Bill 212 would rename the three-member panel the Texas Energy Resources Commission. Appropriate, given that the RRC has not a single thing to do with train regulations. It has everything to do with energy regulation Texas.

So, why not have a name that reflects its duties? Because over many legislative sessions, some dyed-in-the-wool old goats didn’t want to change the name because, well, they thought history and tradition were important than relevance.

It’s been a ridiculous resistance effort from the get-go.

I’ve lived in Texas nearly 30 years and the Railroad Commission has had nothing to do with trains almost during that entire time. The RRC once regulated trucking rates, but gave that up too in the 1980s to concentrate on energy regulation.

The Railroad Commission had a member, Kent Hance – the current chancellor of the Texas Tech University System – who wanted Texas to become an ex officio member of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. Texas does consider itself a “whole other country,” but that seemed a bit pretentious.

The Senate vote to rename the RRC passed with a 21-0 vote, which is a sizable mandate to do something that makes sense.

Besides the new name can morph into a nice acronym: TERC.

Let’s do it, legislators.

Ted Cruz may be setting records in Washington for Senate ostentatiousness.

First, the Texas Republican defeated the state’s lieutenant governor, David Dewhurst, whom almost every political “expert” in Texas thought was a shoo-in to replace Kay Bailey Hutchison in the Senate. Didn’t happen, as Dewhurst lost the GOP primary to Cruz, who then went on to defeat Democratic former state Rep. Paul Sadler handily in the 2012 general election.

Then the rookie senator took his seat and began slinging accusations left and right about President Obama’s picks for at least two key Cabinet picks: John Kerry at State and Chuck Hagel at Defense. He suggested the two men, both decorated Vietnam War veterans, lacked “sufficient regard” for the military. Cruz has never served in the military, let alone put his life on the line.

He’s strutted and preened in front of TV cameras, joining the likes of Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer and Republican Rep. Peter King, both of New York, as the most TV-hungry pols on Capitol Hill.

Now comes word that Cruz might want to run for president of the United States of America in 2016.

http://www.politico.com/story/2013/05/ted-cruz-2016-president-90843.html?hp=t1_3

Count me as one American who’ll never vote for this guy, but who kind of hopes he takes the leap.

I’ve never particularly liked politicians – or businessmen and women, for that matter – who act like know-it-alls when they take on new assignments. Cruz just seems to have this way about him that gets under my skin. He chastises individuals with many more years of experience in the sometimes-complex act of legislating. He lectures his colleagues on the Constitution, such as when he scolded Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California on the fine points of the Second Amendment, to which Feinstein said she is “not a sixth-grader” and knew a fair amount about the Constitution.

This guy, a tea party favorite, is going to be fun to watch, if only to see if his hubris has any limits. So far, Ted Cruz’s reservoir of self-aggrandizement seems infinite.

I need help here.

I’m having trouble understanding how the term “gun control” has become synonymous to some Americans with “disarmament.” I am perplexed that the argument has become one of absolutes, that any form of gun control is seen by gun-rights advocates as code for “they’re coming to disarm law-abiding Americans.”

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/297319-rnc-and-dnc-clash-over-ad-with-picture-of-obama-consoling-newtown-family

The universal background check legislation that failed in the U.S. Senate is the best example of the perversion of this debate. The background check is seen by foes of gun control as an intrusion. They say, accurately I’ll concede, that a thorough background check wouldn’t have prevented the Newtown, Conn., school massacre that left 20 children and six educators dead. It is true that the madman who did the deed took the guns from his mother – who had purchased them legally – and then killed her before embarking on his killing spree.

That argument, though, begs the bigger question. How do we stop other madmen from acquiring guns from, say, a private party or a gun dealer? Universal background checks to me seem like a reasonable option.

The gun lobby, though, has persuaded enough lawmakers that any form of tighter laws translates into some kind of Big Brother overreach into people’s homes, where they keep their guns. I believe I’ve heard the president himself say on many occasions that no one who owns a gun today will have that firearm taken away.

The intent is to seek to prevent future madmen from committing the kinds of tragic deeds that occurred in Newtown, Aurora, Blacksburg … wherever these kinds of massacres have occurred.

I see nothing in any of these proposals that translates to disarming lawful Americans.

Mark Sanford wants to return to public office after betraying the people who once elected him governor of their state.

It blows my mind that he just might get that chance.

Sanford debated Democratic opponent Elizabeth Colbert Busch in South Carolina the other night. Sanford, the former Republican South Carolina governor, has become the object of late-night comedians’ jokes, pundits’ barbs and even has been dismissed by the higher-ups in his own political party.

But he just might win the special election to Congress from South Carolina.

http://nbcpolitics.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/04/29/17976693-sanford-plays-party-card-with-colbert-busch-in-sole-sc-debate?lite

Why the jokes and the dissing?

Well, he had an affair while he was still married to his wife, Jenny. That’s not the worst of it – in my view – although cheating on one’s spouse is bad enough. Sanford took off for the Southern Hemisphere to frolic with his mistress while telling the world he was “hiking the Appalachian Trail.” He disappeared. He was off he grid, all the while getting paid to “govern” his state. He lied.

That was over Mothers Day weekend 2009. The word got out. Sanford was caught and the political world began its collective tittering.

Colbert Busch is a solid candidate. She reportedly did well in the debate with Sanford, who observers said needed to hit it out of the park against the sister of comedian Stephen Colbert. They also said he didn’t get the job done.

The GOP has turned its back on Sanford, who recently was caught sneaking into his wife’s home and violating a court order to stay away. The soap opera quality of this campaign almost defies description.

It’s been sort of fun watching this guy try to explain himself. But now the serious business of selecting a congressional representative is almost at hand. I hope Mark Sanford gets the boot in the backside he deserves. It’s obviously not my call. Vote wisely, 1st Congressional District residents.

Sandra Day O’Connor now says she’s having second thoughts about a case that many folks say determined who would be elected president of the United States in 2000.

http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/justice-oconnor-maybe-bush-v-gore-was-mistake

My first thought when I saw that was that Al Gore may have thrown something large and heavy at a breakable object when he heard the news. My second thought, once I read what the retired Supreme Court justice said, was that the outcome likely may have been the same.

Either way, I still wonder: What took her so long to reach this conclusion?

O’Connor was the first woman appointed to the high court, selected by President Reagan in 1981. She retired in 2006 after taking part in the landmark decision that enabled Texas Gov. George W. Bush to be elected president over then-Vice President Gore by the narrowest margin in memory.

The 5-4 decision, with O’Connor voting with the majority, ended the recount of ballots in Florida. Bush had about 500 more votes than Gore in Florida, giving him the state’s electoral votes needed to put him into the White House. He won with 271 electoral votes to Gore’s 266 votes, needing 270 to ensure victory. And all this occurred with Gore capturing more popular votes nationally than the guy who won.

O’Connor says now that the court perhaps should have tossed it back to the state and not decided it. “Maybe the court should have said, ‘We’re not going to take it, goodbye,'” O’Connor told the Chicago Tribune.

What would have happened? Well, the recount could have continued and perhaps Bush’s lead would have held up. Or, perhaps, Gore could scarfed up a few more votes, wiped out Bush’s slim margin and he would have won the state’s electoral votes, enabling the VP to move into the White House.

More than 12 years after one of the most controversial rulings in Supreme Court history, the debate is about to catch fire all over again.

Listen up, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, one of your own is calling you out.

Jennifer Rubin, a noted conservative columnist for the Washington Post, says Cruz is too mean and his mean streak is hurting the conservative cause.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2013/04/29/dont-be-a-jerk-sen-cruz/

I don’t particularly care if Cruz’s brusque behavior harms conservatives. I do care, though, if it gets in the way of good government.

Cruz has been in the Senate for less than four months and already he’s making a name for himself, several names in fact. And some of them might be unfit for print here.

Remember the time he questioned whether Secretary of State John Kerry and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, two decorated Vietnam War combat veterans, had a “sufficient regard” for the military? And this came from someone who’s never worn his country’s military uniform.

Well, he’s taken – in Rubin’s view – to voting against legislation and then criticizing his fellow Republicans for voting against his wishes. Rubin compares Cruz unfavorably to fellow tea party Senate golden boy Rand Paul, R-Ky., who Rubin describes as being “polite to a fault.”

“These qualities serve him well, indeed making some strident positions seem less so. Moreover, Rand Paul is trying to accomplish something. He’s put forth a budget. He’s offered suggestions to amend the Gang of Eight’s immigration bill. He’s suggested reforms to our drug laws,” Rubin writes about Paul.

Cruz, on the other hand, comes off as a strident know-it-all who hasn’t been in the Senate saddle long enough to understand the long-standing clubby nature of the organization to which he was elected.

And when the rookie senator gets dressed down in public by the sometimes-irascible Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., for impugning the integrity of someone such as former Republican Sen. Hagel, then you’ve been dressed down by one of the best.