"It's Like Disneyland"

A couple days ago, one of the other interns put the Washington experience a good way, saying "It's like Disneyland." For political junkies, we get to see people everyday that we are only used to seeing on TV. Today I got to go to a press conference for my congresswoman. There, I got to see John Kerry and Barbara Boxer. After that we went to a meeting with Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. At one point the congressmen/women had to go vote, leaving the Justice in the room with just a couple of staffers. After some prodding from our communications director, I was able to ask her for a photo and talk to her for a little bit. I'll try and post the photo and some more about today in a later post.

Over the last two weeks, I've also been able to see Elizabeth Kucinich (the wife of Dennis Kucinich) along with Steny Hoyer, John Conyers, Secretary of Defense Gates, Admiral Mullen, and many more who I can't think of right now. During orientation, we saw Dennis Kucinich, Secretary of Veteran Affairs Shinseki, and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Earlier this week, there wasn't much going on in the morning, so I was allowed to go to a hearing of the Senate Budget Committee. It didn't sound all that exciting, but I then realized the only witness was going to be OMB Director Peter Orzag, who Jon Stewart highlighted on The Daily Show. He was going to be presenting the President's budget proposals for FY 2011. I wasn't expecting too much. It ultimately ended up very interesting with Senator Judd Gregg yelling at Orzag, and then Senator Bernie Sanders firing back at Gregg to defend Orzag. Later, during Sanders' time he went after Gregg for helping to increase the deficit despite claiming that he is a deficit hawk. They then had a back and forth, which apparently they're not supposed to have. I realize it doesn't sound that interesting, but it was good enough for Sanders to feature on his youtube channel. You can also watch it on the Senate's official website, it starts at about 52 minutes and then Sanders going after Gregg is at about 80 minutes.