There's hardly a more interesting time to be in Washington DC than now (apparently the President didn't agree with me because he was in Burbank yesterday).  No, I did not come to Capitol Hill to beg for a piece of the stimulus pie, although it seems that everyone else has and no one yet seems to know how we'll pay for the pie.  The cafeteria of the Rayburn Congressional Office Building was jammed with lobbiests plotting and planning how to snag some bucks from the government (that's us). Everywhere you looked people were talking deals over cafeteria food you could find at any high school.   An anthropologist would go wild observing and studying this habitat of the powerful and the powerful wannabes on Capitol Hill.  I came away with two very distinct and dramatically diverse observations that I'd like to share.  First, Congress definitely enjoys drama and Congress people love their moral outrage at big business.  While I was there, the House passed a measure that would tax the bonuses of bailout company employees with salaries more than $250,000 at 90% (of course it also has to pass the Senate to become law).  Don't we have laws that prevent our government from punishing a specific group of people without a trial?  Actually, we do.  Bills of attainder are forbidden by Article I, section 9, clause 3 of the US Constitution.  It will be interesting to see how this plays out given that it was Congress that authorized the bonuses in the first place.  But it was fun to see all the chest pounding and puffing.  Like I said, an anthropologist would have been in primate heaven.

The second, and perhaps more important, observation was that anyone--and I do mean ANYONE--can enter the Congressional office buildings (as long as you're not carrying a weapon) and roam the halls or visit the office of your favorite congressperson or senator.  How many other countries allow their citizens to observe the workings of government at will?  I don't think most people even know they can do that.  I can tell you that it's great fun to mingle with the people you see on the news shows every day and to realize that they're just people like you and me, trying to do a job--some better than others. As citizens we should all be more involved in making sure our representatives are doing what we want them to do.  I hope you all have tthe opportunity to spend a day on Capitol Hill--it's the ultimate reality show.