That Wily Foxx

Rep. Virginia Foxx’s debut in the Rules Committee Monday night “might go down in the history books,” according to an attendee. That wily Foxx managed to get crusty Rep. Dave Obey not only to stop speaking but also to apparently not return, leaving his papers and pencil.

During Foxx’s testimony, she reportedly said: “Mr. Obey, you keep saying you will try. You will try to stimulate the economy. You will try and make the stimulus package work. You will try. I see you have a fascination with pencils, as do I.” (Bringing them even closer together, since both were fiddling with pencils.)

Then, she continued, “Mr. Obey, can you put down your pencil?” A “bewildered” Obey “reluctantly put down his pencil,” we’re told. Foxx then gleefully exclaimed: “See?! You didn’t try to put down your pencil; you did it! Why can’t you stop saying you will try and just do it?!”

Obey apparently didn’t return — not even to fetch his popular pencil and papers — due to a “meeting.” As for Foxx, her spokesman Aaron Groen told us: “I’m not surprised to hear that coming from her. She’s used that line on me before.”

If this is what we’re in for, the Rules Committee just got a hell of a lot more interesting.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/anneschroeder/0109/That_Wily_Foxx_.html