Cowboys not Eggheads

Here Comes the Boom! - with Special Guest David Boomer

October 12, 2022 Season 4 Episode 402
Cowboys not Eggheads
Here Comes the Boom! - with Special Guest David Boomer
Cowboys not Eggheads +
Become a supporter of the show!
Starting at $3/month
Support
Show Notes Transcript

Sam's favorite egghead, David Boomer, describes a cowboy tactic he pulled when he worked in the United States Congress.  David Boomer is solely responsible for the Pledge of Allegiance being recited daily in the House of Representatives.  Join us for a fun story of a stunt that made history.  Here comes the Boom! 

Support the show

Thanks for listening! SUBSCRIBE, Review, Rate, and Share. Contact us: cowboysnoteggheads@gmail.com Let us know if you want a hat ($20), tee shirt ($30), coffee cup ($25), or window decal for your truck. ($30)


Here Comes the Boom Podcast
Wed, Oct 12, 2022 6:13PM • 36:15
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
pledge, vote, house, roland, dukakis, speaker, day, allegiance, members, democrat, resolution, called, boomer, cowboys, bill, worked, boom, point, rollin, democrats
SPEAKERS
Intro, Sam Fischer

Intro  00:00
Welcome to cowboys, not Eggheads home of the brave, not home of the fearful. The world needs more cowboys and fewer eggheads. We're everywhere podcasts are found. So tell your fellow cowboys, and let's keep the conversation alive on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. Remember to subscribe, rate, review and share. And now, cowboys, not a gets. We have Sam Fisher

Sam Fischer  00:33
cowboys not eggheads!  Today I'm here with my favorite Egghead friend of all time, but he did a very cowboy type stunt that we're going to talk about today's podcast, my longtime friend and colleague David Boomer -  Boom, welcome to cowboys, not eggheads.

00:48
Thanks for having me looking forward to it.

Sam Fischer  00:50
So So listeners know David Boomer is a political operative. And if anybody wants any political stories from Boom and I , will have to pay us because we do have quite a few. We've been through the I've shared with many people many times, and we've got listeners in all 50 states boom in 36 countries, so they don't all know our relationship. We've been through a lot of political wars together. We've been in a lot of foxholes. I like to call it the foxhole. And there's nobody that is a more consummate political professional than David Boomer. There's no one that I would rather be in the foxhole with. So I'm I'm very excited to welcome my foxhole buddy, Dave Boo, of many years. I mean, how long have we known each other? Boom? 15? Probably, Yep, exactly. Yeah. So this will be good. But we're not going to like I said, we're not going to talk about politics today. be too obvious. But we are going to talk about something that happened politically for somebody that Boomer used to work for. And that is the story of how the Pledge of Allegiance became a normal, normal part of protocol to open a session of the United States House. And I would think that most listeners would think well, that that would have been there since day one, but boom, that was not the case. Right? Not at all. And how did you find out that that wasn't the case? Or what, what? What made you come up with this antic? What's the story?

02:23
Well, trip backwards now to 1988. And I think the bottom line is, people that have remember that election year, know that one of the big issues that Vice President Bush ran on, and the opponent his opponent was Michael Dukakis, like the governor of Massachusetts. Yes. What was Bush was campaigning, you know, almost on kind of broad theories, broad philosophies, one of which was the the pledge of allegiance is something that unites us, it's good. And then the students, children in schools should say it, you know, generally the first period of class and in doing so, and incidentally, this first this issue first came up in among the Democrats, Al Gore, who was running for president criticized Dukakis for the fact that years before Dukakis had vetoed a bill that would require teachers to lead their students in the Pledge of Allegiance, Massachusetts public schools, and basically, Dukakis as he did throughout the campaign, gave overly legalistic responses to whatever the issue was, there was like no heart to it, no empathy. And his position was, the Supreme Court has said, You can't do that everyone knows that. who's taken a class in law school. Wrong, basically. And Bush, they nailed him on this. And then what the Supreme Court ruled was that you can't expel a student who refuses to say the Pledge, because on the other hand, you're you're saying the state needs to offer them free, compulsory education. You can't suspend them just because they lose

Sam Fischer  04:21
first amendment right like everybody else. So

04:22
the students Yes. Now so Dukakis was saying that extended to the teachers. No, basically as a as a matter of their contract, they can be required to perform that function leading their their students in the Pledge of Allegiance and a matter of fact, and I believe it was the union teachers union in Chicago, actually sued, sued the good, I think, the state in Illinois when Illinois was requiring that and they made that argument they said it's a First Amendment right the You know, we should not be forced to say it. And I think it was one of the Court of Appeals. It was lesser than the Supreme Court, but that they just they came on out on the side of, you know, the the school system or whoever was involved with that lawsuit. And they said, Yes, as a matter of your contract, a teacher can be required to lead the students in the Pledge of Allegiance. So Dukakis had it backwards. And a matter of fact, he vetoed the bill, the overwhelmingly Democrat legislature, the House and Senate in Massachusetts, overrode them. And I believe it was unanimous. There wasn't a single vote to support to caucus, right. And basically, it was in 1987, as the Democrats started having their debates that Al Gore brought this up and attack to caucus on it. Well, he'll fast forward to the next year 1988. And here we go. Bush was starting to hit Dukakis on it. And Dukakis is giving his legalistic thing you know, it's unconstitutional. Everyone knows that. Well, no. Anyway, then it started to become a major issue. And the parties were jumping into it. And it was like in the summer, we're on August break, and I remember thinking about it. You know, we don't you know,

Sam Fischer  06:21
so you have this list of let's catch listeners up at this time you're working for I worked for

06:25
Congressman John Rowland of Connecticut who had been a young guy at that time. Yeah. 27. Yeah, he was the nation's Yeah. Well, were

Sam Fischer  06:34
you at that time. Same young guys, young guys. Yeah. He

06:38
had been elected in the Reagan landslide of 1984. He was a state representative at the time, and we were good friends. I worked in the Connecticut legislature and got to know

Sam Fischer  06:47
him. So you're working for the congressman, what capacity?

06:50
I was the legislative assistant, okay, in Washington. Okay. And he was there three terms. The last two years of his term I switched on, I was his press secretary. But at this point, I was I was the legislative assistant. Now

Sam Fischer  07:01
this is first term, then second secretary. Okay. Well,

07:06
actually third notes. Yeah, he's in the second second

Sam Fischer  07:08
term. So just a young congressman from Connecticut, right? A rising star, though. Yes. And you're a young guy, also just helping him on his way. So that's, that's kind of the environment, right.

07:19
So what I did was, the more I looked at, like the rules, and there was nothing there, like in the house, and the rules of the house, it goes on and on and on. But there is a section where they talk about the order of events in a session day. And it starts out, you know, Speaker calls the House to order. And then then they have the prayer. And it's right there in the order prayer. And then it's like, you know, motion or, you know, issues laid on the table from a prior session, just bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, that order of which things go in. And that's when, if you listen carefully, a lot of the times you'll hear members may, like from the speaker's douse the last unanimous consent to dispense with reading of the journal. That's one of the right, so technically, the Clerk of the House would every day would get up and read the house journal from the prior day. And they suspend the rules as a unanimous consent. All right, suspend the render to the journal. And there's nothing in there about the Pledge of Allegiance.

Sam Fischer  08:24
How did you did you always knew this, obviously, because you had been there. So what cued you to think, hey, Eureka are what?

08:34
Everyone's arguing about the Pledge of Allegiance. So

Sam Fischer  08:35
it was just a political environment. And you're like, hey,

08:39
let's say it here. And like, how

Sam Fischer  08:40
come we're not saying here now that you said that wasn't Congressman Roland that was David Boomer, right came up with that. Right. And to his credit, very historical.

08:48
I'd be a little footnote in history, I guess. Yeah. And to, you know, Congressman Roland was always very quick to give credit to people. And when people asked him, you know, who came up with that? He'd say, Me, you write my name? Alright, just a great guy. And so at any rate, I did some I had to do the background work. I went to the legal counsel for the Minority Leader. We're in the minority at the time, and I explained what I wanted to do, and he chuckled. And then he was like, he was looking, was there ever a precedent? Was there ever a motion on this? And he called me, he actually, his office was down the hall from ours in the canon office building. I went and saw him several times and he courtly old old guy from the South Bend been there a long time he said, he said, Now I'll just warn you. You better talk to Bob Michaels office the minority leader because he does not like it when you try to change the the procedures without going through the normal process. Bob

Sam Fischer  09:48
Michaels was a seat speaker though. No, here's the minority a minority Okay. Okay. Okay. Democrats, right was the writer Tim Wright was to Texas was the was the speaker.

09:58
Okay, so the Minority Leader Are, we're in the minority with Bob Michael, who was also a great guy. I talked to him a few times from Illinois. His legal counsel said, You need to check with them. And so I called up his chief of staff who I had met a few times. And I went over there. And I explained what I wanted to do. Same thing. He chuckled, he thought, Oh, that'd be that'd be interesting. And then he said, Now, I gotta tell you, Bob, and he's one of the few people who would call Mr. Michael, by his first name. He said, Bob, probably, if he doesn't vote the other way, he'll abstain. But he just he doesn't like going around the normal process on things. They'd like to rock the boat, on procedures, but then they understood this is this was political. Yeah, everyone's talking about the pledge. And so then it came to Okay, well, what do we do? And the answer was a privilege resolution, which has the standing of if it's something and in the house rules, it talks about what a privilege resolution is. And I don't have it in front of me, but it's words to the effect of it's something that affects the dignity or the integrity of the house. Okay. Now, just

Sam Fischer  11:12
to say somebody died, say, Newt Gingrich died or something, somebody to have a privileged resolution, recognizing, right? Speaker Gingrich's service, that kind of a thing. Right,

11:22
right, that you would go out of order. You don't have to go through the committees and all that you just something to

Sam Fischer  11:28
bring it's front and attention to need some front attention to kind of a thing? Yes, that's it's, it's, it's non binding, right, a non binding resolution, but it's, it's something that you would do to recognize something that needs recognized in a hurry.

11:44
So I sat down, and I kind of wrote the thing. And it's, you know, whereas many, many civic community and sports and educational events begin with a recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag. And whereas the integrity and dignity of the house would be enhanced. If each session day begins with a resident rendition of recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag. And I'm summarized, there might have been more. Now therefore, be it resolved, that each session day shall begin with a recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag. All right, very simple. Yeah. So then we get to, how do you how do you bring this up? And the bottom line was, if Roland had gone to like, the speakers, the majority side has said, Hey, I have a resolution I'd like to bring up they'd be go jump in a lake. Right. So we didn't tell anyone on that side other than, like the minority leaders office.

Sam Fischer  12:50
Some I see. And that's news to me, because I thought that it was always a complete out of ambush of stealth, kind of. So at least Michael knew about the Minority Leader knew about it. But that's

13:00
yeah, that's it. And so that day, we were looking for a day to do it. And Roland had the thing in his pocket for like, a few days. And he was on the floor a lot. And like, he'd called me say, I can't I can't do it now. Well, now we got to Friday, September 9 to 1988. I looked up the dates last night here. Basically, it's all Fridays,

Sam Fischer  13:25
or listeners, those Fridays in the house is usually a light day, isn't it? It's usually a quick day, right?

13:31
You know, or it can be chaos, because they're trying to try to get out of town and they're trying to pass something, some bills, something that come up them in the morning, that went on a little long, and like Jim Wright came to the floor, and he said, you know, we have a lot, you know, we have a lot of business to do here, you know, on the floor.

Sam Fischer  13:50
This is boomers best attempt at a Texas accent by the way, we need

13:53
Hilarious for die the work of this house, and appreciate everyone's assistance and concern. Thank you. Alright, so if then at that point, I had gone over to the house, I was sitting up in the gallery. And at that point, probably about an hour later, they were finishing up a build. And I noticed that the there's a Democrat at all times presiding, you know, over the house, it's not the speaker, it's generally it's another member that they they handpick to kind of stand up there and just, you know, recognize people you know that and the staff there kind of tell them what to do. You can you can kind of see them whispering in their ear, they turn the mic off. But at any rate, there was a member from Illinois named Ken Gray, who had been there for quite some time, conservative Democrat, kind of a partier. But everyone liked the guy. Everyone liked the guy. And he had been on the transportation committee for years. And his main thing is he brought a lot of roads back to his, you know, his district in Illinois. And he enrolled them were friends so they were Were finishing up this bill. And they were the next bill was this huge Department of Health and Human Services appropriations bill, which is a biggie. And the chairman at the time was just standing up, you know, at the Democrat leadership table to start debate on the bill. And Roland stood up on the Republican side and was screaming. Mr. Speaker, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Speaker, and Ken gray looked over at them and said, for what purpose does the gentleman rise?

Sam Fischer  15:31
So great. I'm sorry, gray sitting in the Speaker's Yes. Okay. So somebody's rolling. Right. Okay.

15:36
And to digress for a second. What what gray probably thought it was, was that it's not untypical for a member who might have missed a vote. It got there late. They'll stand up and ask you no point of personal privilege. I was on unavoidably detained on the prior vote. Had I been present? I would vote I and I would like to journal to note that.

Sam Fischer  16:01
So that's probably the way in Gray's mine. That's that's where this was gonna go. Right. However, yeah.

16:06
So for what purpose does the gentleman rise and roll and said, I offer a privileged resolution. Now, just to set the stage a bit, it sounds like, imagine a beehive with all this buzzing, you're maybe about 20 yards away, it's kind of humming a little 100 distance, you know, you have dozens of people in this area talking. Yeah. And so when he said that I offer privilege resolution is like you could hear a pin drop. And, and so Grace said, the clerk will read the rest report the resolution, and you can see a page run up to rollin and he pulled the thing out of the out of his pocket that I drafted in the page runs it up there and hands it to the clerk. And then here the clerk says resolution offered by Representative John roll and reads word for word but boom introduced written whereas many educational sports community groups begin their you know, begin their activity each day with begin their meetings with a pledge of allegiance recitation of the pledge allegiance to the flag. And whereas, in other words, as you just said, you know, is the resolution we drafted? And basically, you could hear a pin drop. And there was like dead silence,

Sam Fischer  17:26
because the reason for that is because everybody shit their pants, right? They

17:29
know, oh, my God, you know. So then Steny Hoyer, who then was one of the whips, he's now the majority leader. He stood up and said, You know, I'm I object I have Jerry are really great vendor thing is their objection. And, and store, your lawyer stood up and said, I object. The resolution is not in order. And so great, said the house will suspend. And so you know, the aides come up to gray and tell him what to say. And gray then came on, they made the mic live. And he said, after reading the resolution, it's clear that it would change the procedures of the house. It would change the rules of the house. It is therefore not privileged. And then rolling immediately said Mr. Rule into the chair. Yeah. And I asked for the yeas and Nays. And so at that point,

Sam Fischer  18:30
rollin knew to do that or was prepared to do that. Yes,

18:34
yes. And so, here we go. And if you've ever worked in a house or been there, you know that a cert bells go off. That signifies if when five bells went off to their murmuring, you know, ring when fire when it's five in a row, that means they vote in time? Yeah. So I'm, um, as I said, I'm sitting there. And

Sam Fischer  18:57
so where are you in that? Where are you at?

19:00
The gallery, you're gonna go out and I'm in the front first row. So you're not over back to your office? No, I'm in the house that you were in the house. And I'm looking down now. Yeah. And I happen to be above the corner where kind of the Democrats staff, they've got a desk and a table where and one of the things is, they have a phone system as to the Republicans, that basically, when there's a vote, they will auto dial every all the Democrat members telling them, this is the house Democrat leadership. A vote is occurring on a motion

Sam Fischer  19:33
and we need you to vote it down now.

19:36
To appeal the ruling of the chair. We need you to vote yes to the Democrat leadership encourages a vote yes to sustain the rule, the ruling of the chair. That and and that's kind of that, you know, that's kind of all it was was a vague thing, but Jim Wright had was standing down there and I heard him say, God, damn, that was smart. Okay, So now as more and more members are coming in

Sam Fischer  20:02
to Democrat Speaker of the House says, God Damn, that was smart, because he knew he was in for a pickle, right? So then here comes the boom,

20:10
as members are coming in. They're going, Oh, what is this? And they're saying you have to vote yes. To keep the pledge of allegiance from being said every morning. And Memphis, we're going I'm not voting against the pledge. That's, that's crazy. I'm not I'm not voting that way. And so for a vote goes 15 minutes. And is it was running along? The Republicans were winning it. And that means that most of them were voting no, because the the ruling was, the appeal was with enrollment appealed was, shall the ruling of the chair be sustained? Right? So if you agree with the, if you agree with no, you don't want to pledge essentially, then you vote yes, it's the backwards of what you think we're other Republicans are winning the vote. And then the whip operation goes into effect, where, again, in this corner, they have these printers that are printing out these sheets, and what it is, it's all the members that are voting the wrong way, by their region, and then the whips come over and they get their sheet, then they have to go seek out those that are off the reservation, so to speak, and tell them to change their vote. And, you know, basically, as we got to the 15 minutes, it was very close. And then the Democrats Democrats instead. And I think there were there were there were probably half dozen, maybe maybe a few more that Democrats have voted with the Republicans voted no. But at that point, great, you know, gala that the ruling of the chair sustain, bam, and then you know, then you said Mr. naturals recognize the chair there, whatever education appropriations committee is written, then naturae got up and did his big bill on, you know, the Department of Health and Human Services budget. So at that point, I got up and I thought, Okay, I'll go back to the office. And I'm walking back over I thought, I hope that worked out. I hope that doesn't backfire off on us. But I get off the elevator on the fifth floor of the Canon building. And I'm walking down the hall and I can just hear this noise. And it's coming from our office. It was like, the phones, all the phones were going off the hook. People were calling it had been on obviously C span. Yeah, it was covering it. And so there was the early days of C span, wasn't it? Yes. Okay. And so basically, there, you know, there are people calling in sand that was wonderful than there are others, like you suck, what are you doing? You know, but anyway, I get there. And it's just chaos. And a few minutes later, rolling called me. And he said, Can you get over here? I said, Well, I just was I just got back. He said, I'm going to do a press conference on that. And I said, good. And so basically you have to be invited by the press to come into the Capitol Pressroom in the cabinet. He went in and did a quickie press conference. And basically the to go back to like Bob, Michael. Bob made by Michael had abstained, he didn't vote no. But he abstained, but I called his office and the Chief of Staff said, I think one good for you. The point was made? Well, little did we know right at that point, and all through the afternoon, the Dukakis campaign was mortified, as was Wright's office, they were talking in the D, Triple C, what do we do? And they decided on, okay, they would have the speaker come out on the floor, castigate Roland without mentioning his name, but accused them a bit of plain politics. And then what he said was, you know, the gentleman from Connecticut, that's what he referred to him, offered a privilege resolution. And he knew, he knew damn well, that was not privileged. He did it for politics. And they said the unit the pledge of allegiance is something designed to unite us not to define not to bite us divide us. And he said, but the fact is, I have the authority if I so choose that we can have that said here and the change so that also does his idea. So basically from saying no changes the procedures in the house, it's not privileged, you have to you have to pass an amendment to the rules. Oh, no, we can Yeah, we can go and do it. Yeah, that's an essence what he said was so basically, and you know, he did gave quite a stem Winder speeder. It's designed to unite us not to divide us. And you know, we'll move forward together, and we'll say the Pledge of Allegiance God, God bless the United States and everyone. Right, so, you know, your 15 seconds of fame that was kind of that, you know, so then they're, they, you know, they went back to the other bills they

Sam Fischer  24:50
do, when did they actually physically do it? Boom, was it that day or next day,

24:54
it was the next day, which was Monday. Okay, the 13th and they because it

Sam Fischer  24:57
definitely it's just a resolution saying ng word supportive this yeah there's nothing that activated it to happen right the speaker made it happen right because he was forced to right

25:08
after after say it basically them saying that you know you can't do it you can't do this but then there what ended so monday

Sam Fischer  25:15
so there's there's a weekend oppressor the deal oh yeah and so money rational you know right I would imagine like Meet the Press on a Sunday morning

25:25
rolls on everything Yeah. And so I'm looking here like and the for those of you who would be inclined the US House has a summary of this very issue and it's the Pledge of Allegiance becomes a part of the house daily order of business. It is HTTP, s, colon, backslash, backslash, N, backslash history.house.gov. And then backslash buveur historical highlight details. So anyone who want would want to see their explanation I think you go to the house searches. Yeah, the history. The historian but

Sam Fischer  26:08
So on Monday, though, they started with I mean, what's that what happened? It just, it was like nothing ever happened. And he started with the pledge.

26:17
Exactly. So it was an I'll never forget it was they picked very was actually very smart. They picked GV Sonny Montgomery from Alabama, who had been a veteran, one of the longest serving members to give the pledge to Democrat. So and and normally. Normally on Mondays, they hold the votes open till they do a lot of debates. But the whole devotes until like Tuesday,

Sam Fischer  26:45
right, because members are still coming back. And right now a lot of my viewers, they'll get to town till Tuesday, right

26:49
and rollin was gonna I think his plan was to go back Monday night. But this all changed when we found out they were doing the pledge. So he went back Sunday. And, you know, Montgomery came up to the in the well the house with probably about 2530 Other members, including Roland. And they all said the pledge facing the Dyess because that's where the lag is. And I remember he said this, it's it's a real extreme honor to be able to do this. And then says the pledge and I think that just kind of set it all. The our the next part for us was later that week, I think it was Wednesday. One of the pages came up to Roland on the floor, and said the speaker wants to talk to you. And he was up in the chair

Sam Fischer  27:37
and the speaker is a Democrat. He has no idea he these guys have never talked before. Probably

27:41
never, never, never. Yeah. And so Roland goes up there said Yes, Mr. Speaker, and writes that he right kind of leans over to him and says, Johnny, Johnny, I hope there are no hard feelings over what's happened here. But I would I would like you to do the honor of leading us in the Pledge of Allegiance. And Roland said it'd be It'd be my honor to do so sir. And he said, Okay, well, we'll have that we'll, we'll have that deep picked out real quick. And, sure enough, what he did was he almost something was coming up where they were going to most of the members are going to hightail it out of there. On a Thursday, they were going to be in session on Friday, but not not for any votes. And it was that Friday, so basically, Roland had to go there, give the pledge and for nobody, and basically missed the day, which you'd already you know, like crammed. Right, you know, because you're now you're talking, you know, you're talking two months to well, September, about two months to the election, you know, like seven weeks. So it was basically an fu by the speaker but a rollin you know, we put out a press release, rollin delete house in the pledge. Bam, it's news. It's on TV in Connecticut on the radio. You know, Congressman John Rowland has been selected to leave the house and the Pledge of Allegiance this Friday. Yeah. So the next thing that then some of the newspapers really let rollin have it like the Washington Post? So we wrote up again, I like I wrote an op ed, I wrote an op ed basically, that just defended what Roland did, and kind of really let right habit that all this came down to was that, you know, someone challenged Jim right in his house, you know, like his fiefdom. It's like, he's king. And we're all just little servants. So while I'm, that's not me, you know, we were right to do this and, and they, they printed it, and the day, the day they printed it, like Roland called me from the floor, he said that the response to that op ed is unbelievable. I said, Good. He said, Oh, yeah. Well, it's so happened then. That same day, the House Armed Services Committee was meeting and one of their senior members was it was his birthday, and they were going to kind of do a little celebration for the guy who's from Texas, and rolling as a junior member of the committee, so he's kind of in the front first row, the kidney of the kidney. The kidney desks that are usually down in the front row. Well, who comes in to the to the committee meeting? sits down at like, what's the witness table right in front across from John Rowland? Speaker gym, right. And this is the day that this op eds appeared in the paper. And I remember like, they're like nodding to each other smiling. And you know, you could think you could just see the anger.

Sam Fischer  30:33
It's just a gamesmanship, though. I mean, it's just the game.

30:37
So anyway, it went on, or it would come up in our debates that Roland had, and he ended up winning, like 75% of them are really

Sam Fischer  30:46
Springboarding. I mean, he went on to a long career in politics. It's incredible story. What how does that I mean, how do you, you know, you've done a lot of things in your career, a lot of stuff. And you and I've done a lot of them together. Yeah. But that's is that right at the top of the things that you've sort of pulled

31:05
off? Yeah. And I did a number of things like that when I worked in the Connecticut legislature. And, for instance, there was this judge was

Sam Fischer  31:14
that before you were okay, yeah. So you're now you're absolutely young, younger,

31:18
like in 8182 or 8384. Before I came down to Washington, right. I worked in the house, Connecticut house, and there was this probate judge, who was a real crook. And it was in the in Hartford. And it was in the news all the time, he was being investigated. And I sat down with a guy named Chris Shay's, who was one of one of the other one of our caucus members. Yep. And Seamus was from Stanford, which was weighed down by the New York border is out now. Yeah, he was not familiar with this. But I showed him the articles. And he was really outraged. And we decided, let's get this guy. Let's, let's try to impeach him. So I typed out a release for che San, you know, and we did a letter to the judge saying, you know, unless you agree to resign, I will seek to impeach you. And I told chaise, let me go deliver this letter, you know, and then we'll put the release out. And it's the type of thing so I walked up in the press room with the news release. And I was doing press at that time. And it's the type of thing and it hit the desk. And they're like, a lot of times, you know, you'd put it on their inbox. And they'd look at it and keep going on what they're doing. Immediately. They're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, it shaves around here. We want to talk to him. Oh, and I can't even get out of the room. They're all like, where's your weight your little he was on he was on live on the radio, you know, on TV, and they were having to look at we cited the, you know, like the impeachment Section of the Constitution, but like, they're all like trying to find it in the Constitution. And, and then it ended up. They they they ended up creating a panel to look at the sky, and to on whether or not to impeach him. And the results of it were. And this is kind of just being being there. Really, you know, in the back of fly on the wall. One of the members of the special panel was the deputy Republican leader named Bob Jayco. And so he had all the transcripts of their meetings. And he would let me read them they were confidential, but in his office, I can read the transcripts. It was this guy basically, there was a very wealthy woman named Ethel Donohue, who had lived in a mansion right on the West Hartford line, and air to some fortune when she was very, very ill. This probate judge got had an attorney filed a motion to put the US attorney and there were no family members. This attorney would be like her caregiver or legal or legal guardian. And he was in a, in a relationship with this with this probate judge, you know, gay, right. They were they were lovers. And while anyway, all that they did, they would use her mansion for parties. She'd be up on the third floor of nurses, you know, watching over and they're in her mansion ordering, you know, food and drink delivered. They were having parties spending 1000s of dollars, while this woman is kind of comatose. They they they recommended that the guy be impeached. Yeah. And right before they were going to take the vote, that the judge announced he was going to retire. And so they let him out of it. But so that's what I did some into retirement. But yeah, so you know, doing things like that. Yeah. It's it's, you know, you make a difference. Yeah. To me, this one on the pledge was, it is something that, you know, unites us as a country and it's good that they started in the house. And apparently, and I didn't know this, they did go ahead later on. When the Republicans took control, they put it in the rules, because you know, all through 80 880-990-9192 9394 They would say the Pledge but it wouldn't Be like, nowhere in formal right. And there was actually in the house. Right, right. And there were like articles, you know, these these people that are like historians on the house, who would argue about whether or not it was legitimate to do that. Right. You know, there. It's not in the rules on rules. You can do it. Yeah. I mean, it was hilarious, the back and forth. So, but it's there now. And, you know, we're talking, let's see. 34 years later, you know, they still say it.

Sam Fischer  35:27
Unbelievable. Well, I America. Thanks you. I thank you. To kind of wrap up, you know, with some phenomenal, incredible story. So do you consider yourself to be an egghead Boomer, are you a cowboy? Because that's what you pulled off was pretty cowboy ish. It's kind of wild, wild west stuff. Yeah. But you had to know the procedures inside now. You had to be booksmart. So you had to be the egg head side was there. So what would you consider yourself? Well, on the spectrum, we'll probably right in the middle of that right in the middle. In both booms the astronaut We call those people astronauts, okay, or veterinarians. Well, thanks, boom.

36:07
Thank you for having me. You bet. Enjoyed it.