"In those days," he says, "John Quincy Adams, former president, was a member of the House ... and while he was banned, was prohibited from discussing slavery, former ... Congressman Adams as an abolitionist believed that slavery was the biggest blot on our nation's history and wanted to remove that.
"He came to the House floor day after day, week after week, and because he could not talk directly about slavery, he read letters from his constituents in Massachusetts expressing their concern about slavery," Brown recalled.
Along those same lines today, the Democrat says the Republican-controlled Congress "will not allow us to debate the issue of the president's perhaps not telling the whole truth about his decision to attack Iraq."
So, Brown has taken to the floor of the House and begun reading letters from his constituents, several of whom are calling on Congress to create an independent commission to investigate the Bush administration's "distortion of evidence of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program" - as one Ohio letter-writer refers to it.
AVID READER
He's made a name for himself as speaker of the House, as CEO of the communications firm the Gingrich Group, as senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and Hoover Institution, and as a political pundit on virtually every major TV network.
Now, Newt Gingrich has been voted a "Top Reviewer" by Amazon.com readers.
"Speaker Gingrich is an avid reader," says the giant bookseller, which counts 120 recent reviews by Gingrich. "He does not review all of the books he reads. You will not find any bad reviews here, just the books he thinks you might enjoy."
Among the reviews: "The Cutout" by Francine Mathews ("I highly recommend this novel"), "The Protector" by David Morrell ("You won't put it down"), and "City of Bones" by Michael Connelly ("Excellent writing for a haunting novel").
Gingrich has been visiting book store lately to sign copies of his own new book, "Gettysburg: A Novel of the Civil War." Without giving away the plot, imagine a Confederate victory at Gettysburg.
WASHINGTON WHARF
The nation's capital boasting a fisherman's wharf that rivals San Francisco?
It might not be too far in the making.
"My goal is to make the waterfront like a San Diego, where I live, or a San Francisco wharf and waterfront," says U.S. Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, "where people can go down with their families and enjoy the waterfront and water that is clean instead of polluted like it even still is today."
The California Republican is vice chairman of the Subcommittee on the District of Columbia, which last week announced the federal city's 2004 $7.9 billion appropriations bill. While the total is $43 million (8.4 percent) below last year's allocation, $107 million is earmarked for projects and programs that directly benefit the city, waterfront improvements included.
Cunningham says he can recall when serving on the District subcommittee "used to be a drudgery. If you asked somebody to serve on the D.C. committee, you had to pull them out from under the bed to get them to come to work," he said.
Now, given the accomplishments of D.C. Mayor Anthony A. Williams, "it has gotten to be one of the better committees," he says.
PROHIBITION MISSION
John Doyle, executive director of the American Beverage Institute, is charging that a National Academy of Sciences panel that was supposed to advise Congress how to prevent underage drinking instead advanced the agenda of the neo-prohibitionist movement.
The panel's recommendations include a call for increased taxes on alcohol sales - a proposal designed to reduce consumption by all individuals, not just those who are underage.
The NAS report, "Reducing Underage Drinking: A Collective Responsibility," states: "It is at least logically possible that the most 'cost-effective strategy to reduce underage drinking' includes policies that produce their main effects not on underage drinking, but rather on the overall level of drinking in the population."
Nine of the 12 NAS panelists, it is further charged, are "anti-alcohol activists," eight with reported ties to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, "an $8 billion organization that has contributed hundreds of millions of dollars to the neo-prohibitionist movement."
"A panel so heavily stacked with individuals bearing an anti-alcohol agenda cannot report objectively," says Doyle, charging they have abused their authority.
<Editor's Note: See more on this study from Center for Consumer Freedom>