Welch and the "OC"

A tipster um, tipped us off to an interesting developing story regarding what has been a major issue for people interested in the actions of Vermont's resident Congress-guy. As has been playing out over the past few weeks, both supporters and detractors of Welch have been taking him to task over his lack of leadership on his big campaign promise; standing up to Bush, ending the war, and all of that.

In the ever-interesting Vermont blogosphere, the divide over Welchie's spinning plate approach has created some odd bedfellows. Here, some guy urges his fellow anti-war peeps to holler at Welch and get him to sign onto the Woolsey Bill, while a rather shrill and often vulgar exchange goes down over here on that very issue. Oh, the first prediction of the 2008 House race in VT is also made, albeit in an unsurprisingly curse-laden (but strangely satisfying) manner here. And in the non-shocker of the month, this guy still hasn't said anything about Welch and the war, despite his avowed huge role in getting Welch elected. All in all, it has been what they might call in Ferdinand "a big to-do." Pretty wild, right?

This is the kind of thing that eventually gets a politician's attention. When people are faxing, calling, sending smoke signals, carrier pigeons, etc, to your office en masse to suggest that you get with the program, your staff probably starts to tell you that you should, well, get with the program. Predictably, we had to hear something from Welchie's peeps on why he wasn't doing just that. Apparently, tonight we heard that, actually, he was.

Or did we?

Well, in typical Welch fashion, there seems to be some lack of clarity on the matter. The whole thing started with this piece of information, which was given mad props by the folks at the website upon which you see it. You notice how it does not say "press release." It's also not listed as a press release on Welch's website. All we know is that it is "from Peter Welch's office." That is not to say that it's not a press release, per se. We don't get cc'd on stuff from them. However, it came from somewhere...inside Welch's office, apparently.

This is part of what it says:

"I am an original cosponsor of H.R. 508, sponsored by Representatives (sic) Lynn Woolsey"

Wait, really? Where to start...

Well, we started by looking up the original information on HR 508, which we yapped about weeks ago as the bill that Welch wouldn't sign on to. We were surprised, then, when Welch said that he "was an 'original cosponsor'" of this piece of legislation...did we mess up on our research? You can see the Thomas text of the bill here. You can see the list of cosponsors, both original and not, here. Do you see Welch's name? Neither do we. It's also not on Welch's website. Weird.

Then we started thinking, well, Welch's people wouldn't put out something so blatantly untrue without checking it out first. After all, there has been such an uproar about why he didn't cosponsor it; why wouldn't he have just said something like "yes, I actually did cosponsor that bill," and thusly end the brewing conflict?

In short, if he cosponsored the bill, why the uproar? We started thinking that the term itself, "original cosponsor," might be a term of art. That's why it didn't show up on the Thomas list...or something. So, we looked it up. This is what we found here:

"Before introduction, Representatives and Senators will often ask their colleagues to be an 'original cosponsor' of their legislation. Being an an original cosponsor means that they agreed to support the bill before it was introduced, which presumably is riskier because the bill hasn't been studied. It is a sign of commitment to an issue."

So, it wasn't some issue of arcane House lingo that we just didn't get. Again, weird.

The only thing we can conclude, right now, is that this is really strange. There are a few options as to what is going down here:

1) The information that came from Welch's office (if that's really where it came from) is wrong. Welch didn't sign the Woolsey bill, he just has some really poor press people. Honest mistake.

2) The information that came from Welch's office is right, and everyone else, including Thomas, Welch's website, GovTrack, and WW, are all wrong. If this is the case, we apologize. Profusely.

3) Welch's people got so freaked out by the thousands of voters who called his office that they just threw out this piece to make everyone think that Welch signed the bill, although they knew he didn't. This would be really, really bad.

In any event, observers from both sides of the debate on Welch should take it upon themselves to figure out what is going on here. If this really came from Welch's office, and it is purposefully deceptive, well, there should be serious repercussions. If it is a mistake it should be acknowledged, and if it is true it should be noted by anti-war demonstrators and others who want to see Welch live up to his campaign promises.

Essentially, we need to know the truth. Was Welch an original cosponsor of this bill or not?

However, we have to say, we think that this information is, ahem, not true. We do not think that Welch was a cosponsor of HR 508. It just doesn't add up. What, then, is going on? We don't know.

Given these doubts, we think that those looking for some anti-war cred from Welch need to take a step back, look at the facts, and find out what is going on.

And when the dust settles, we'll go from there.

Trust us.