Rep. Richard “Dick” Pombo (R-Calif.) is a big proponent of drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. So, apparently, are his staffers. When an editorial appeared in a Connecticut paper opposing the latest effort to drill the Refuge, senior Pombo advisor Daniel Kish had this to say:
Connecticut should have its statehood taken away from it. The foolishness of its pampered residents should be demonstrated to others by a government program to bulldoze the entire state, salt the land and construct a windfarm to supply NYC with electricity. And its residents should be relocated to Guantanamo Bay where they can take a number behind the 3 who hung themselves this weekend, since they seem so intent on suicide.
Lovely.
(via Stakeholder)
Update [2006-8-2 12:53:37 by David Roberts]: The Roll Call story is subscription-only, so here’s the full bit from today’s gossip column:
Aide to Connecticut: Bombs Away!
Wow, a senior aide to House Resources Chairman Richard Pombo (R-Calif.) really has it out for the state of Connecticut. So much so that he wrote in an e-mail to colleagues that he’d like the state to be wiped off the map and its residents shipped off to Gitmo.
A copy of his e-mail, which arrived in HOH’s inbox this week via good old-fashioned snail mail, was startling, if funny in a morbid, twisted way.
The aide – Daniel Kish, a senior adviser to Pombo – was responding to an innocent question from the committee’s deputy communications director, who wanted guidance from her colleagues on how to respond to a June 13 editorial in the Hartford Courant that opposed drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. She sent an e-mail to five colleagues, including Kish, on the same day the editorial was published.
The spokeswoman, Melissa DeLaney, attached the Courant editorial, which took issue with Pombo’s policy of wanting to open up ANWR for drilling, and asked a simple one-word question: “Response?”
Kish had a response, all right. Seven minutes after DeLaney sent the e-mail, Kish replied:
“Connecticut should have its statehood taken away from it. The foolishness of its pampered residents should be demonstrated to others by a government program to bulldoze the entire state, salt the land and construct a windfarm to supply NYC with electricity. And its residents should be relocated to Guantanamo Bay where they can take a number behind the 3 who hung themselves this weekend, since they seem so intent on suicide.”
Well then, that pretty much answered her question, didn’t it?
We wondered, was Kish serious? Should the Connecticut delegation be overly concerned? He says not so much.
“You caught me in my ongoing ribbing of Andrew Whelan, who was born and raised in Connecticut and works in our press shop,” Kish wrote in an e-mail to HOH. “He’s a great, smart and talented guy who understands the link between economic progress and access to energy supplies, and gives back as good as he takes it. I always tell him the country doesn’t run on nutmeg.”
