Weird flashbacks to my childhood:
SACRAMENTO, Calif.—Jackie Speier may be heading back to Washington, nearly 30 years after she was shot and left for dead on a Guyana airstrip while on a fact-finding trip into the Jim Jones cult.
Speier, a Democrat and former California state legislator, is the favorite to win a special election Tuesday to fill the House seat left vacant by the death of Rep. Tom Lantos, a San Mateo Democrat who was the only Holocaust survivor to serve in Congress.
It is Speier’s second try for the seat once held by her former boss, the late Rep. Leo Ryan.
In 1979, she lost a special election to succeed Ryan, who had been killed a few months earlier while investigating reports that Jones was holding followers against their will at Jonestown, a compound in Guyana.
Speier, then a member of Ryan’s staff, was seriously wounded in the same attack by Jones’ henchmen.
Rep. Leo Ryan was a great progressive lawmaker. I hope Speier will restore that tradition.
Flavor Aid
Historical accuracy and all…
Wow, what a totally baaaad title for your post!!
you no likee?
In the spirit of Cartman, it’s kewl!!
My flashback of this is Powers Boothe in the 1980 film of the tragedy – real high, real sweaty.
Speir was a progressive lawmaker in the State legislature for years before she termed out a few years back. She’s known for successfully sponsoring consumer protection laws and women-and-children issues like child support enforcement and domestic violence victim protection. She was very persistent in bringing a lot of those bills to Sacramento over and over until they got it. I think she’s going to be good in Congress.
But BooMan — knows her Kool-Aid? ouch! The wounds of Jonestown are still fresh for many in these parts (San Francisco/Oakland.)
Anyway if you’re interested there was a really good documentary on PBS last year. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/jonestown/index.html
I get to vote for her tomorrow. She’s against the war.
I have watched her career over the years, and I’m afraid she doesn’t impress. When she was in the California legislature, I’d scan the Los Angeles Times and note the bills she’d introduced. They were very often quite peculiar.
One bill that she did get passed was one that allowed California license plates to have symbols other than the A-Z,0-9 characters: a hand, a star, a heart
It diminishes the ability to scan a plate for most people, and for what? To “express yourself”, which is NOT what a license plate’s primary function is.
That bill is a good example of what she was up to at the time.
Speier came off then as a kooky-Californian. Nothing since then has caused me to change my mind. To be sure, a Democrat in the House of Representatives is always welcome, but let’s not kid ourselves about Speier. She’s unlikely to be a serious legislator.