Inside the Beltway

Hold your horses

Let’s get this straight: Since September 11, 2001, $6.3 billion in federal funding for terrorism preparedness has been granted in a timely manner to all 50 states. Yet here we are, almost three years since the terrorist attacks, and roughly $5.2 billion of the funding remains in the administrative pipeline.

What gives?

A lack of risk-based funding formulas, coupled with the absence of clear preparedness guidelines, has led to some “questionable” uses of the terrorism preparedness grants at the state and local levels, a report by the House Select Committee on Homeland Security finds.

“As of April 2004, about 85 percent of the terrorism preparedness grants distributed through the [fiscal] 2003 budget have not yet been utilized,” says the committee’s chairman, Rep. Christopher Cox, California Republican. “They have been allocated by [the Homeland Security Department], but not spent by states and localities.

“In Tennessee, for example, only $381,000 out of a $10 million homeland-security grant awarded in [fiscal] 2003 has been spent,” he says.

The committee says that at the state and local levels, no federal terrorism preparedness standards were ever set in stone “to guide the spending of funds, leading to many instances of questionable expenditures.”

Everything Kerry

How about politicizing your car’s dashboard with a John Kerry bobblehead?

And for you fishermen out there, what better bait to hang on your line than a shiny John Kerry fishing lure?

’Tis the season of political paraphernalia, and from now until November you can buy just about anything with a presidential mug attached to it.

There’s the John Kerry dartboard (aim for the nose). And tell what time the polls close with George W. Bush and John Kerry “horse’s [rear]” wall clocks.

President Bush, a former owner of the Texas Rangers baseball team, obviously has signed his share of baseballs. Yet more rare is a baseball signed by Mr. Kerry.

“You are bidding on an official major league baseball that has been signed in person by presidential hopeful John Kerry,” writes one EBay entrepreneur. “The mint baseball was signed in person by Kerry when he was in St. Paul, Minn., on Wednesday, Feb. 25, 2004. He signed the ball after speaking at St. Thomas College. The ball was signed on the sweet spot and looks real nice. He signed the ball with a ballpoint pen that turned out really well. You will not find a better looking John Kerry ball anywhere.”

What’s interesting about campaign buttons at this stage of the presidential contest is we still don’t know the name of Mr. Kerry’s running mate. So as we await word, buttons are touting everybody from “Kerry-Edwards” and “Kerry-Dean” to “Kerry-Clinton” (as in Hillary Rodham) and the “Dream Team: Kerry-McCain.”

Our favorite button on the auction block, though, is a rare red, white and blue “The Duke & John Kerry,” which we’ve discovered on EBay.

Who’s the Duke?

“The ’Duke,’ of course, is Mike Dukakis, the former governor of Massachusetts and the unsuccessful Democratic nominee for President in 1988,” the seller says. “This pin is from 1982, when Dukakis was running for governor with John Kerry … sharing the ticket as the candidate for lieutenant governor.”

Conservative choice

Beating John Kerry to the punch of choosing a running mate is Constitution Party presidential candidate Michael Peroutka, who this Sunday we’re told will introduce Chuck Baldwin as the other half of the ticket.

Mr. Baldwin, who turns 52 on Monday, is the host of the syndicated radio program “Chuck Baldwin Live,” and considers the Constitution Party the only political party at the national level that represents conservative, constitutional principles.

“With the constitutional and conservative demise of both the Democrat and Republican parties, it is painfully obvious that an alternative party must arise on the national scene to represent the core values and principles established by America’s founding fathers,” Mr. Baldwin says.

The party holds its convention in June in Valley Forge, Pa. Voters in 40 states likely will find the Peroutka-Baldwin ticket on Election Day ballots.

Comedy routine

What House Majority Whip Roy Blunt of Missouri still can’t figure out is why a September 11 commission member — in this case former Sen. Bob Kerrey, Nebraska Democrat — would appear on Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show” and satirize hearings into why the terrorist attacks happened — and just hours before testimony from President Bush.

“This is not a laughing matter,” says Mr. Blunt, a Republican. “Just two days before the 9/11 commission is scheduled to question the president of the United States about intelligence failures that precipitated the loss of more than 3,000 Americans, Senator Bob Kerrey asked a comedian for pointers.”

In the opinion of Mr. Blunt, Mr. Kerrey turned the hearings “into comedy central when he chastised National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice for forgetting specific details of brief conversations held three years ago — all the while, he was unable to even remember her name.”

Tristen makes three

It was a most eventful day Tuesday for Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, California Republican, and his wife, Rhonda, who are proud to announce the addition of three family members. In order of arrival, they are:

• Baby girl Annika Brigit: 4 pounds, 6 ounces.

• Baby boy Christian August: 3 pounds, 5 ounces.

• Baby girl Tristen Francis: 3 pounds, 7 ounces.

Although the triplets were a month premature, all three are doing well. The entire family (the congressman was with his wife for the delivery) are expected to go home soon.

But just one day after their birth, the triplets got an early taste of politics — being cited in a House debate on taxes.

Rep. Charles W. Stenholm, Texas Democrat, yesterday spoke out against a bill to end permanently the tax code’s marriage penalty, saying it would saddle future generations with debt and that he was “worried about the Rohrabacher triplets.”

But a fellow California Republican, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bill Thomas, pointed out one reason married couples need extra income.

“Dana Rohrabacher and Rhonda Rohrabacher have diapers to change,” Mr. Thomas said.

• John McCaslin, whose column is nationally syndicated, can be reached at 202/636-3284 or jmccaslin@washingtontimes.com.