Today’s Wichita Eagle contains a story (Tea party organizers: We paid for event) covering the dust-up between a member of the Kansas House of Representatives and tea party organizers.
The state representative — Dale Swenson, a Democrat whose district covers parts of southwest Wichita — said of the tea party event: “We need taxes to support their protests.”
Today’s Eagle story reports on organizer Lynda Tyler’s expenditures necessary to put on the event. It’s much the same information as in her statement presented in my post Wichita tea party paid its expenses from Sunday.
In his defense, Swenson told the Eagle “I was just being funny.”
Actually, joking around might be a believable defense in Swenson’s case. For example, last November he was re-elected to the Kansas House as a Republican. Then, just two months later, he decided he was really a Democrat and switched parties. I wonder if the voters in his district think that was a funny joke.
When running for the Kansas House for the first time in 1994, Swenson, according to a profile in the Wichita Eagle, was in favor of 12-year term limits for the Legislature and Congress. He must have been joking around then, because as is the case with many politicians who are initially in favor of term limits, he decided that term limits are just a funny joke, too.
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