They don’t make crazy like they used to.
Back before Reps. Steve King, Michele Bachmann, and the Tea Party frosh, we had Rep. Dan Burton (R-IN), who will not be running for reelection this year, we learned today.
Yeah, yeah, you may say he was never as crazy as the current crop of comers. Maybe not, but he gave them a run for their money and one thing about Burton set him apart: Unlike today’s pretenders, Burton wielded the chairman’s gavel.
I’m not sure the ’90s would have been the ’90s without Burton and his subpoena power. He was Sylvester to Bill Clinton’s Tweety, Wile E. Coyote to Wild Bill’s Roadrunner.
We’re putting together the top 10 most out there moments of Dan Burton’s career, captured on video, almost all of which came in the mid- to late ’90s. So former Clinton hands, longtime Hill denizens, and ’90s scandal aficionados, send us your best candidates for that top 10, preferably with a link to the video. We want to make sure we don’t overlook any of the finest moments of the Burton oeuvre.
Sadly there does not appear to be video from those pre-YouTube days of Burton re-creating the suicide of Vince Foster in his own backyard using a melon. You get the idea.
