ABH Miscellany

Barrow
The Eds at the ABH dish out a heapin' helpin' of praise for local boy made good John Barrow today, and for once, we agree. At issue is Barrow's bill H.R. 4025, the "Disabled Veterans Fairness Act," which would peg the mileage reimbursement rate for vets going to VA hospitals to the mileage rate paid to government employees.

Now, as you good folks know, we haven't always been the biggest fans of Barrow here at AP, but this time, we're going to give him a laurel (and hearty handshake) for introducing this measure. Funding for veterans' programs traditionally gets short shrift from administrations of both parties (it seems like about every two years legislation to fix the concurrent benefits debacle passes Congress and promptly gets vetoed by the White House.)

Y'see, this is the kind of thing that freshman Congressmen should do. Pick an issue, work up some legislation, and get it out of committee. It helps if (like this one) it's an issue that no one else is really paying much attention to. We also idly wonder if it isn't a pretty smart communications move, to take the spotlight (such as it is) off Barrow's donations from Karl Rove's lawyer, and his mis-step on the whole flag-burning thing. Note that in our discussion of the latter, we mentioned a few days ago that "if you're really worried about [responding to the Visitations] go make some new news, instead of rehashing the old stuff."

Bike Lanes
Big ol' story in the ABH today about Prince Avenue. Putting aside the fact that the headline is a little confusing on the first read (who is this "Safety King," and where can I meet him?), Blake does a good job of rehashing the meeting last night. We're still making up our minds on this one.
One interesting phrase to note is this: "'You are trading in one type of accident for another type of accident, but it's a safer type of accident,' [ACC Transportation Director David Clark] said."
Trade in one type of accident for a safer type of accident. We think that might have been John Kerry's slogan last year.

Bruno
One anti-LPDS letter in the ABH mailbag today. The writer implies the specter of spot zoning again. Writer also implies that by eliminating the existing spot zoning, the east side will explode into a frenzy of strip malls. Funny, we kind of already thought it had. Also launches a few ill-researched and unfounded charges. Find those on your own.

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