Inside the Beltway

Speaks for everyone

“To see the picture of one of the young women … go on the TV screen, and see her young, beautiful face, and realize her life has been taken, and thinking of her family, and then magnifying this at least 30 times, it is almost too much to bear.”

— Sen. Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat, speaking on the Senate floor about this week’s bloody massacre at Virginia Tech

Animal house

We see former Bush White House aide-turned-publishing-executive Mary Matalin and her political-animal husband, James Carville, are hosting a May 10 book party in their Old Town Alexandria home for Dan Matthews, senior vice president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA).

“Lily Tomlin says that it’s ‘like David Sedaris but with a mission,’ ” PETA’s Bruce Freidrich tells Inside the Beltway about the new book, with Miss Tomlin referring to the popular humorist and author of several recently published animal fables.

As for Mr. Matthews’ tome (for the book jacket, the author is dressed in a bunny outfit, although we prefer him clad as a carrot), the title is: “Committed: A Rabble-Rouser’s Memoir.”

Derisive decade

“Can you believe it’s been 10 years,” writes F.R. “Bob” Duplantier, arguably the country’s top political limerick writer, who has been appearing in Inside the Beltway since 1997.

The first published “politickle,” as Mr. Duplantier calls his limericks, dealt with then-Vice President Al Gore and his fellow Democratic Party members accepting loads of campaign cash generated by John Huang, with whom Mr. Gore had traveled to Taiwan on a trip sponsored by a Buddhist organization. That same group in 1996 hosted a questionable Democratic fundraiser at a Buddhist temple in California, and Democrats eventually were forced to return more than a million dollars in contributions.

Today, Mr. Duplantier is still cranking out his “politickles.” One from the archives that we think is rather timely is titled “Division Leaders”:

Who has kept black Americans down

And spread hatred from town to town?

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