I wasn’t surprised to learn my Congressman’s appalling 4% score on the Club for Growth RePORKard report on the proportion of this year’s 50 anti-pork amendments each member of the House voted for. Frank Wolf is a big-government, business-as-usual, incumbent Republican deadweight. He has held Virginia’s 10th district virtually unopposed since before I moved here five years ago, and he just gets more spendy and more statist with each passing year.

You may remember Rep. Wolf for his brainchild, the “fresh eyes on the problem” Iraq Study Group, on which noted jurist and military strategist Sandra Day O’Connor served her country one more time to help produce a unanimous report of platitudes and foreign policy non-starters aimed at extricating the US from Iraq.

I remember him for doing everything he could to appropriate Federal tax dollars for various Virginia boondoggles, then campaigning on the basis of his pork-barrel spending. As if that weren’t enough, he’s assured me in written responses to my occasional emails that he supports the right of Americans to own guns for ‘collecting and sporting purposes’, happily dodging the guts of the Second Amendment lest he rock the boat in his increasingly urbanized district. Pandering fucktard.

It’s become something of a cliche to list the absurd things Congress spends our money on, but I think it’s apropos just this once. Note that I’m just listing a selection below; you can see all 50 in the Club for Growth report, linked above.

Wolf voted against bills to strike the following earmarks (in effect, voting for the earmarks):

• House Vote 559 - Bars funding of $150,000 for the Clover Bend Historic Site in Arkansas. Amendment failed, 98-331.

• House Vote 560 - Bars funding of $100,000 for the St. Joseph’s College Theatre Renovation in Indiana. Amendment failed, 97-328.

• House Vote 566 - Bars funding of $150,000 for equipment for the Conte Anadromous Fish Laboratory. Amendment failed, 97-330. [WTF is an Anadromous Fish, anyway? - AJN]

• House Vote 593 - Bars funding of $129,000 for the Mitchell County Development Foundation for the home of the “perfect Christmas tree” project. Amendment passed, 249-174.

• House Vote 670 - Bars funding of $100,000 for the Kansas Regional Prisons Museum in Lansing, Kan. Amendment failed, 112-317.

• House Vote 700 - Bars funding of $50,000 for the National Mule and Packers Museum in Woodlake, CA. Amendment failed, 69-352.

• House Vote 735 - Bars funding of $200,000 for the Lobster Institute at the University of Maine in Orono, Maine. Amendment failed, 87-328.

• House Vote 809 - Bars funding of $878,046 for the Catfish Pathogen Genomic Project in Auburn, AL. Amendment failed, 74-357.

• House Vote 845 - Bars funding of $39,000,000 for the National Drug Intelligence Center in Johnstown, PA. Amendment failed, 109-301.

Not to be confused for an unapologetic pork-barrel spender, there are at least two things even Frank Wolf won’t waste taxpayer money on:

• House Vote 678 - Bars funding of $2,000,000 for the Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Service at the City College of New York in New York City. Amendment failed, 108-316.

• House Vote 839 - Bars funding of $2,500,000 for the Presidio Trust national park in San Francisco, CA. Amendment failed, 94-311.

If Frank has a forumla for pissing away my tax dollars on bullshit make-work projects, it’s not clear to me what it is. Is the Charlie Rangel Center for Public Service obviously not a legitimate recipient of Federal money, while the Lobster Institute or the Catfish Pathogen Genomic Project are?

[Insert rant about Constitutional limits on Federal power here. Commerce clause, blah blah blah]

Please, please, someone run against Frank Wolf. At this point, I’d almost vote for a socialist weasel, just for a change.