This past week the U.S. Congress lost a true legend, Congressman Edgar Englewright Known as the “Member’s Member,” the grizzled House veteran served the 14th District of Virginia for over 26 years, racking up a litany of honors & awards, and a fair number of scandalous headlines. We present to you our favorite highlights from a distinguished career of government service:
10) His classic, seventeen hour filibuster of the 1986 Violence Against Peoples’ Act. You can’t filibuster in the House? Tell that to the poor page who carried away Edgar’s spittoon/bedpan at 3am.
9) His frequent use of livestock as visual aids during one-minute floor speeches (including a rooster, a pony, and once a rather mean-tempered emu) to demonstrate his intense support for the small farmers and mohair interests that populate his heavily rural district.
8) His recurring introduction of legislation at the start of every Congress since 1989 to make the opening round of the NCAA Div. I Men’s Basketball Tournament a federal holiday since “nobody f***ing works those days anyway.”
7) His legislation successfully declaring plankton as the official aquatic microorganism of the United States.
6) The time on Scarborough Country, during an intense debate with the host over the importance of fundamental tax reform, Edgar repeatedly called for a flat tax on all “wagers.” When the moderator asked him “Do you mean bettors?” Englewright replied,”Yes, it would be better.”
5) His three-hour and thirteen minute heartfelt and glassy-eyed 2008 floor speech eulogizing the passing of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who at that point was in fact still alive.
Englewright and Margaret Tatcher early 1990s.
4) When, in the summer of ‘01, within the course of one legislative week, Edgar founded and was then summarily dismissed from the short-lived “Gang of 3².”
3) The 2010 scandal in which it was alleged that the Congressman hired an undocumented immigrant to work as a babysitter, despite have no children under the age of 30.
Speaker Boehner defends Rep. Englewright on ABC’s Meet the Press.
2) His unsuccessful primary bid for U.S. Senate in the West Virginia 2008 GOP primary, while simultaneously serving as a congressman from Virginia, via strategic deployment of his official residential mobile home.
1) His longstanding campaign to eliminate Daylight Savings Time on states’ rights grounds.
Visit his website, EnglewrightForCongress.com for more information.
The post 10 Reasons To Love Former Congressman Edgar Englewright appeared first on ClotureClub.com.
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