Kesher Talk

ROLL CALL 4/22/04
One More Time.

This is getting to be a regular thing with the endlessly embattled Rep. Jim Moran (D-Va.).

In the latest incident, Moran has formally apologized to a group of veterans he angrily kicked out of his Rayburn House Office Building office in early March after they came to lobby him on a constitutional amendment barring desecration of the American flag and other issues.

The veterans now join the Jewish community, an 8-year-old boy, and at least two of his Congressional colleagues as those who have had run-ins with Moran during his tenure in Congress. Moran has also been criticized for borrowing $25,000 from a lobbyist and then backing legislation benefiting that lobbyist’s client, as well as taking a $447,000 loan from a credit firm just days before agreeing to co-sponsor a bill supported by the company.

In an April 12 letter to Edwin Dentz, chairman of the National Legislative Council of the American Legion, Moran said he wanted “to apologize for my tone which your colleagues found objectionable during a recent visit to my office.” Moran added: “Again, rudeness is inexcusable and I also understand that it is more appropriate to act gently and solicitously toward everyone.”

The Virginia Democrat was responding to an earlier letter from Dentz in which he complained about Moran’s treatment of four of his colleagues. “In the more than 20 years I have been involved in legislative matters with the American Legion, I do not recall any of us being treated rudely by a Member of Congress,” Dentz wrote. “The gentlemen advised me that they had been unceremoniously ushered out of your outer office and into the hall by you with your upraised voice still disparaging what some of them had traveled many miles to do as volunteers.”

In an interview this week, Dentz said he was not satisfied with Moran’s “purported apology.”

“Jim apparently came barreling out of his office and he said, ‘It’s that damn flag amendment again,’ and he went into a tirade,” Dentz said. “I don’t know exactly what he did physically; he didn’t manhandle anybody. But he ushered them out of the office and into the hall, and he was still raising his voice in the hall when one of his aides came out and quieted him down. ... They were quite shaken by the experience.”

Melissa Koloszar, Moran’s chief of staff, disputed part of Dentz’s version of the latest Moran flare-up.

“It wasn’t really quite like that,” Koloszar said. “They came into the office. It wasn’t a planning meeting or anything. ... The topic Jim sensed they were coming in on was the flag-burning amendment, the constitutional amendment, which he feels has been made a higher priority than many of the other veterans’ issues that he thinks are more important.”

Koloszar added: “The Congressman had to run out to vote or go to another event, so he walked out with them. He wasn’t kicking them out. They were going out anyway.”

Koloszar also acknowledged that Moran “raised his voice. He wasn’t yelling at them - he was taking issue with the topic they came in on. I think there was a total misunderstanding. ... I don’t think the Congressman thought he was that vigorous in his language to them.”

Moran’s letter to Dentz spelled out his efforts to seek billions in additional federal funding for veteran’s health care programs. It also noted that it was a “continuing source of frustration” that lawmakers who support the flag-burning amendment “are given a pass on other issues that I frankly believe are more important to veterans and their families.”

posted by William @ 4/22/2004 04:09:09 PM