Congress

Yesterday afternoon, Gawker broke the story and by that evening Congressman Chris Lee (R-NY) had resigned.

Gossip site Gawker outed Rep. Lee for lying about his marital status and sending the uber-sexy topless photo seen above to a woman he found in Craigslist's personals section.  The married politician almost immediately decided to leave office citing "the harm that my actions have caused my family, my staff and my constituents."

Now, I assume that Chris is a regular reader of the Tosh.0 blog, so I'd appreciate it if the rest of you could stop reading here so I could have a minute with him myself…

Come on, dude?  Craigslist?  You know why most political sex scandals involve call girls and prostitutes?  Because you pay those people money.  And money keeps people quiet.  That's like Politics 101.  Worst case scenario, they try to blackmail you, you pay them more cash.  It's a vicious cycle, but it's a cycle you can control.

And you used your personal Gmail account??  Are you kidding me?  I use an old anonymous Hotmail account on Craigslist if I'm trying to find a used bookshelf.  You didn't realize she'd be able to Google your email address and find out who you were?  What should of given that away is that Google runs Gmail.  You know, Gmail — that thing you're using to send pictures of your congressional pecs to strangers.

And let's talk about those pecs for a second.  Sure, you're in decent shape, but a tight T-shirt wasn't good enough for you?  Or you don't have a pic of you at the beach?  I'm not a woman, but I'm pretty sure if I had to define the word "creepy" with a picture, it'd be of a middle-aged man taking a shirtless photo of himself in a mirror with his cell phone.  The flexing was a nice touch though.

But two years in Congress was a hell of a run for a guy who's this stupid.  You're like a kid who joins the Mafia and immediately starts bragging about all the crimes he commits.  Two years is a long time to not get whacked.  You should take pride in that …the same way you take pride in your body.

We'll miss you, man…

Alright, hopefully no one but former Congressman Chris Lee read that.  It got pretty real.

[via Gawker]

The blogophere has been outraged at the latest finding that 44% of the members of Congress are millionaires.

In fact, bloggers have been so upset they've been wasting hour after hour, day after day, to write about the news since it broke last Friday.  The amount of time and manpower devoted to blogging about this subject matter online is staggering.

And here, I thought snarky Internet bloggers were supposed to be some of the best people in the world at recognizing irony…

Remember Rutherford B. Hayes's public shouting match with Tennessee Representative Benton McMillin on the floor of Congress during the fall of 1880?

Of course you don't!  (1) Because I made it up.  But a far more important (2) because it was never captured on video!

You can't just go shouting "You lie!" at the President of the United States of America during a nationally televised address and expect it NOT to end up all over the Internet, as South Carolina Representative Joe Wilson has learned the hard way.

I guess it could have been worse.  He could have shouted out his ATM pin number.  Or shouted out that he had been cheating on his wife with a lobbyist.

Hahahaha!  Oh, Kucinich!  You always crack me up with these CRAZY viral videos you make for the Internets!

This latest one is a HOOT!  60% of bankruptcies in America are from not being able to pay hospital bills?!?!  WAH-HAHAHAHAH!!!!  You're killin' me, Dennis!  Stop it!  STOP!!!

But seriously…  How'd you get them to let you shoot on the floor of Congress??  I'm sure I could grab some hilarious footage if they'll just let me bring my Flip cam and my cat.

[via Reddit]

Yesterday, Michigan Congressman Pete Hoekstra sent this now infamous tweet into cyberspace:

"Iranian twitter activity similar to what we did in House last year when Republicans were shut down in the House."

In comparing the ongoing p0litical unrest and massive nationwide protests over the questionable elections in Iran (a nation now cut off from communication with the outside world) to basic governmental procedure in the U.S. Congress, Hoekstra unleashed a flurry of absurdly lopsided analogies from the Twitter community mocking his use of, as the brand spankin' new site Pete Hoekstra Is A Meme states, "grandiose exaggerations and comparisons."  (It should be noted that declaring Pete Hoekstra to be a meme less than 24 hours after his initial tweet is somewhat Hoekstraian on its own.  But we'll let them slide for now.)

Buzzfeed called out some of their favorites, of which I favored these three:

"Walked around a lot yesterday. Now I know what the Bataan Death March was like."

"Walked out onto Constitution Ave in D.C. and was almost hit by a taxi. Reminded me of Tienanmen Square."

And this absolute gem: "Sitting in a chair, feeling a good deal like Stephen Hawking."

So you get the deal.  Have you found any Hoekstra reactions you like?  Got any of your own?