The many Tysons Tunnel screw-ups make me sad.  But your P.S. makes me happy.  I'm having a very dichotomous morning.

Does coffee usually make it more or less dichotomous?  And, by the way, wasn't that the word I screwed up on the SATs?  I probably thought it had something to do with musical theory. Ha.

Well, I have cut myself back to only a small cup of coffee lately (I've been working out in the mornings and I figured piling on extra calories 5 minutes before I went down to the gym was a bit counterproductive).  So I guess that probably didn't help.

According to the Martinsville Bulletin:

[Saturday, Del. Ward] Armstrong also told the [Piedmont Democratic Women's] club that the transportation bill, unveiled on the final weekend of the assembly session, "started when Attorney General (Bob) McDonnell and Congressman Tom Davis got together with GOP leaders. ... I'm sure they felt their position in this state as Republicans was weakening. They probably felt they better do something on transportation" or they would be hurt by their failure to do so.

In crafting the bill, "they met in secret, with no input from the public, no involvement of the governor, no involvement by the Democrats. I'm not whining but we're part of the process, too. We're elected just as they are," Armstrong said. "Is it any wonder it's ended up in the mess that it's in. In my humble opinion the only way to fix it is to fix both. There needs to be discussions with the governor and the Democrats. So far they've been unwilling to do that," he added, referring to House Republicans and Senators who were on the conference committee for transportation.

Andrea is way off the mark and tries to degrade one of our public servants because, well, who knows what's going through her head.

The meeting you're referencing took place months ago, and was regarding the transportation bill in the GA.  It was a very very initial meeting where nothing was crafted other than to have top GOP elected officials ensure that the Republican leaders knew how important it was to pass something.  That is not related at all to the meeting Lowell is referring to.

This post is about Tysons Tunnel and elected officials like the Board of Supervisors meeting behind closed doors and out of the public eye.  Stick to the topic at hand.  Your credibility rating is at zero for stunts like this, it's in danger of falling into negative territory.

Tom Davis held the transportation meeting in secret to beat up the Democrats. You don;t know what they discussed.  If he had a transportation meeting without discussing Metro and the tunnel, then he is an idiot. And Tom Davis is a lot of things, but he's no idiot.

And he's no public servant, either. He did nothing for the veterans of Walter Reed in 2004 when he admitted he first heard of the abominable conditions there. Tom Davis was head of the House Reform Committee in 2004, when Salon and a veteran's family member brought this shame to his attention. Congressional Quarterly March 7, 2007. He said he didn't want to embarrass the President. Instead, he was willing to subject the troops to humiliating conditions.

That wasn't the only scandal festering on Davis's watch. He allowed the Reform Committee to languish without any leadership. See the Boston Globe expose of how he sat on his hands while he collected donations from Walter Reed Contractor IAP and others with business before the committee.

His biggest constituents were Tom DeLay and Jack Abramoff.

Of course, we can't forget he pandered so low even the right wing wackos were shocked when he insinuated himself into a Florida family by signing the Schiavo subpoena and related documents with that bastion of ethics, Tom DeLay.

He's no public servant. Don't embarrass public servants by putting Tom Davis in the same category. He left a lot of work for Waxman to do.

This is a very very typical Andrea Chamblee response.

Andrea, I'll tell you what.  I will save you the time next time.  Send me an email and I'll write up your posts for you.  That way you can spend more time researching for your in-depth analysis, or whatever it is that you do.  So drop me an email and I'll go ahead and write up your posts for you.  I might need help linking to the other blog sites, but I'll at least save you some time.

Actually come to think of it, I probably won't save you any time.  You probably just cut/paste from all the prior work you've done.  So nevermind about that offer - I'll take it off the table.

resorting to ad hominem attacks.  By the way, what's the relevance to your comment that this is a "typical" response by Andrea?  If you're bored with what she has to say about Tom Davis, why don't you just ignore what she writes?  Alternately, if you don't agree with what Andrea has to say, why don't you deconstruct her argument using fact and logic?

If you don't work for Davis, you couldn't be telling the truth because you couldn't know what was discussed at a secret meeting of political hacks.  If you do know what was discussed, it must be because you work for Davis, so you're wasting my tax money here. Get back to writing a press release how he cares so much about the troops even though he let them lie in their own urine for 2 years.

There, I just cut and pasted the link instead of the text that provides support for what I said.  You got any references? I found one, and it contained all this in a single post: You said you were a Congressional Page but didn't know what the Page Board does, you said the House Oversight Committee shouldn't oversee the House but you didn't know what it's jurisdiction was, you said a Democrat outed Mark Foley when it was a Republican, and you said Davis wasn''t involved in the Terri Schiavo subpoena without even bothering to read the link with the subpoena with his signature on it.

You gave me more credibility with that single post than I could dream of.

I've seen the proposed aerial option.  It doesn't look offensive.  I also don't quite understand the how the aerial option would be less pedestrian friendly.  Also, it may just be me, but Tysons isn't very pedestrian friendly right now.  So, I don't see how a tunnel will change that.  I guess I don't understand this big row over a tunnel.

There was another article on this in the Post about the Reston Chamber of Commerce's and McLean Chamber of Commerce's feud over this.  I think the Reston Chamber has some valid concerns about the tunnel option.  Primarily that it costs more and could jeopardize federal funds for the project.  In the ASCE study of the two options, they estimate the tunnel costing $250 million more and a delaying construction by up to a year.