Quite a tour for commander-in-chief

Paul Clinton

Rep. Chris Cox might just be the most influential tour guide in

history.

On his trip to Orange County on Friday, President Bush joined Cox

on a 15-minute helicopter ride over Newport Beach and other parts of

the 47th Congressional District.

The copter ride came as a lead-in to Bush’s 3 p.m. speech in Santa

Ana and appearance at a Dana Point fund-raiser for Republican

gubernatorial candidate Bill Simon.

Cox took Bush and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice on

the ride and chatted about some of the country’s pressing issues, he

said, including a possible baseball strike, military action against

Iraq and how to reuse the Tustin Marine Corps Air Station.

Cox, a special counsel in the Reagan White House, said he told

Rice he disagreed with the current viewpoint that America could

initiate military action against Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein without

the approval of Congress.

Cox also said Bush, a former owner of the Texas Rangers, is

frustrated by the possibility of a labor meltdown in the nation’s

pastime.

“He’s very angry with the players and owners that they’re on the

precipice of wrecking the sport,” Cox said. “He thinks [a strike] is

thoroughly ill advised.”

Big bad Rep. daddy

Hipster retro-swing band Big Bad Voodoo Daddy popped in for a

visit to Rep. Dana Rohrabacher’s Washington, D.C., office on Thursday

on its way to a concert that night at a local nightclub.

Daddy’s horn player, Ron Blake, and Rohrabacher press deputy Aaron

Lewis grew up together in the San Fernando Valley. Lewis showed the

band around the office, where they saluted the three surfboards

hanging on the congressman’s wall. The band’s members are all

surfers.

Lewis took the band on a tour of the Capitol building, which

included House Speaker Dennis Hastert’s office, the little-known

speaker’s balcony, the rotunda and the statuary hall.

The band, which was featured in the movie “Swingers,” posed for

pictures at the locations.

Later that night, Daddy played to a packed crowd at Nightclub

9:30, a popular nightspot.

Not Balboa ducks

Providing more evidence that the Internet is playing a bigger and

bigger role in elections, congressional candidate Gerrie Schipske

launched a Web site to attack incumbent Rep. Dana Rohrabacher.

Schipske, a Long Beach nurse and college professor, started her

own site called “Rohrabacher Ducks” (www.rohrabacherducks.us).

Schipske says the site was created to inform voters about

Rohrabacher’s “long history of ducking important things.”

The site is populated with pictures of quackers next to five

sections, the things Schipske says the congressman has ducked. She

clearly engages in a little campaign rhetoric, a part of every

campaign that can have its entertaining moments.

Little more than two months are left in the race for the 46th

Congressional District. Schipske, a Democrat who lost to Rep. Steve

Horn (R-Long Beach) in a 2000 election for a different district.

Since that time, the congressional map has been redrawn, putting more

Democratic sections of Long Beach in what will become the new 46th

District. Rohrabacher now represents the 45th District. The two face

off on Nov. 5.

No mention on the Web site of Balboa Island’s former duck

residents.