Responsiveness

There are many words one might use to describe John Kline: "responsive" is not among them.

In my first post last October 6, I wrote a letter to Kline urging his "bold and forceful" support of the McCain anti-torture amendment. Since then, I've written two additional open letters to Kline. And of course, there was my failed attempt to find out which votes Kline was referring to when he claimed to have "voted for an increase of more than 21 percent in total veterans' funding".

So far, there has been no response of any kind from Kline's office, despite the fact that, in the "21 percent" case at least, I received personal assurances from Kline's staffers that they would provide the info I requested. And in case you're wondering, I didn't just throw those open letters up on my blog; I emailed them to Kline and sent them to his D.C. office via ground mail. So whatever the reason for Kline's unresponsiveness, it hasn't been my lack of trying.

In fact, I can think of only two possible explanations: either Kline hardly responds to any constituent inquiries, or he's figured out I'm not a supporter and so ashcans any correspondence from me. Neither explanation makes him look too good; after all I'm just as much Kline's constituent as John Hinderaker, and Kline sits for interviews with him. And supporter or not, Kline can be confident I'll report his replies accurately; I doubt any other blogger has taken the time to faithfully document large sections of Kline's House floor speeches, or publish an image of Kline's latest fundraising letter.

So today, I started a test. I phoned Kline's D.C. office, and spoke to a very nice young staffer. I told her I had two questions for Kline, which I posed in a neutral manner:

• What is Kline's position on Bush's decision to authorize NSA surveillance of U.S. citizens without obtaining a warrant from the FISA court? (Unbelievably, it appears that Kline has gone for more than two months without commenting on this issue).
• What is Kline's position on Bush's recent decision to allow a company owned by the United Arab nation of Dubai to take control of ports on the Eastern Seaboard?

This young woman wrote down my name, address, phone number and questions (or so I was led to believe), and told me that I would get an answer. Let's see how long it takes.

Note to Kline's staffers: Of course you could always end the suspense by answering my questions, instead of just passively monitoring the site.