STARK RAVING MAD

Police called during House meeting: Accusations of name-calling and threats (Steve Turnham, 7/18/03, CNN)

Capitol Police were called Friday to a contentious House committee meeting marked by a Democratic walkout and accusations of name-calling, vulgarity and physical threats.

Witnesses described flaring tempers. One GOP lawmaker said he almost came to blows with a Democratic colleague he said was threatening him.

The police told lawmakers to work things out themselves and took no action.

The partisan bickering later spilled over onto the House floor, where Democrats and Republicans offered conflicting accounts about what happened in the Ways and Means Committee meeting on a pension plan bill.

The whole thing blew up, witnesses said, when Democrats complained of the way committee's Republican chairman, Rep. Bill Thomas of California, was running the session.

The Democrats said they needed more time to review some changes in the legislation after getting them only the night before.

When they could not to get a line-by-line reading of the bill, a common parliamentary tactic, they walked out and gathered to talk in a library at the back of the meeting room. Thomas, who has a reputation for being blunt, had his staff call the cops.

Democrats said Thomas called police to get them out of the room. Republicans said the police were called because one Democrat, Rep. Pete Stark of California, got out of hand.

Stark, they said, stayed behind after his colleagues left the committee room to berate Thomas and other committee Republicans. [...]

Stark "threatened me with physical harm," said Rep. Scott McInnis of Colorado, a Republican who sits on the committee.

"I think it was entirely appropriate for the chairman of the committee to call the sergeant at arms and the Capitol Police," McInnis said. "I considered that a bodily threat and I fully intended to defend myself. To calm this down -- that is why the chairman did that."

Rep. Kenny Hulshof, a Missouri Republican who sits on the committee, read what he described as a transcript of the meeting.

In it, he quoted Stark as saying to McInnis, "You little fruitcake, you little fruitcake, I said you are a fruitcake."

And, according [to] a Republican leadership aide, the 72-year-old Stark called Thomas a vulgarity.

Somebody shoulda beat the tar out of Pete Stark long ago, and Congressman McInnis should have yesterday, but calling the cops over a political dispute is fairly dubious. Whatever happened to duelling?

MORE:
-Sound, Fury, Pension Rules: Nasty Party Clash in House (SHERYL GAY STOLBERG, 7/19/03, NY Times) Posted by Orrin Judd at July 19, 2003 5:51 AM