The Blotter Alerts
Anything can be used here. --
At a time when the Democrat-controlled Congress appears to direct its attacks and investigations at the White House, two powerful Democratic lawmakers have chosen an unlikely target elsewhere in the city: a local canoe club.
The Washington Canoe Club is a private group that operates a boathouse for its members on the banks of the Potomac River near the tony Georgetown neighborhood, on land it has leased from the National Park Service for $5,000 a year.
That seems inappropriate, say Michigan Reps. John Dingell and Bart Stupak, chairmen of the House Energy and Commerce Committee and its investigative subcommittee, respectively. The two men questioned the Interior Department's practice of granting restrictive leases to private clubs in a letter to Secretary Dirk Kempthorne last month.
"We find it especially troubling that...the Washington Canoe Club...appears to be an exclusive private club limited to a few hundred individuals who were lucky or wealthy enough to pass a rather restrictive screening process," wrote Dingell and Stupak to Kempthorne, whose department oversees federal parkland.
They've got it all wrong, the club's president says. More on this story...