Defense Solutions of Exton, PA has hired our erstwhile representative, Curt Weldon.

Chief executive officer Tim Ringgold said Weldon, a 10-term Republican congressman from Delaware County, would help lead the firm’s “growing defense and homeland security practice areas.”

According to the corporate web site, Weldon has been given the title of Chief Strategic Officer.
UPDATE: delcotimes.com has more on Weldon’s new gig in today’s edition. This quote described what I expected, but now have confirmation from a source who knows more about the topic:

Craig Holman, a campaign finance lobbyist for the nonprofit advocacy group Public Citizen, said Weldon is following a familiar path.

“The congressman is prohibited from making what is called ‘direct lobbying contact’ for one year, which means he can’t call, send a letter or make any other direct contact with a former colleague or staffer,” Holman said.

“What he can do is direct other people and tell them exactly who to call and with what types of appeals. And even if he can’t send a letter, Curt Weldon’s name can appear on the company letterhead, which means every staffer and former colleague will know the letter is from Curt Weldon.”

Holman said 43 percent of former congressmen and women are involved in some type of lobbying activity, “usually with the same groups who lobbied before them while they were in office.”

I’ve been at the polling place in Nether Providence Township since 6:15 AM. It’s impossible to know how things are really going, but here’s how it feels on the ground in our little sliver of the Philly burbs:

In the morning, the Republican base was out. They’re always there. This is a majority Republican district by registration, and it’s a community that votes. Hopes of a disgraced and discouraged Republican base staying away from the polls are, to my senses, wishful thinking. This is a fairly affluent, mostly white suburb, still tied to a county GOP machine. Your mileage may vary.

There are plenty of Republicans who will gladly tell you for whom they’re splitting their tickets.

The Democrats who are showing up to the polls are often angry. They don’t like the sleezey way that their candidates were attacked. One lady railed on the local GOP commissioner for more than five minutes about the disgusting ads that our local state rep, Tom Gannon, lobbed at his Democratic opponent, Bryan Lentz (PA-House 161). Others were suspicious and mad about the awkwardness of our polling site. This is probably a reaction to the national mood. Our local judge of elections, though a member of the other party, plays it straight and clean. I don’t think you’d come across a more civil and fair election board anywhere. Both parties work together at our site to make it work right.

Dems are motivated, and Republicans are still coming out, although we don’t know how they’re splitting their tickets.

The one thing I’m sure of: the independents are with us. That’s the group that’s approaching the outside workers and saying, “I’m an independent, but I’m voting straight Democrat this time.” I’d be willing to bet that the registered “NP’s” are voting so overwhlemingly in our favor that if I were a Democratic operative, I’d play the numbers game and turnout independents, period.

If I were a Republican in this neighborhood, I’d be allergic to every NP voter unless I had a voter ID from a previous canvass already in pocket.

By 2:00, our precinct, which has over 900 voters, had already seen 370 walk through the doors. We have an additional 31 absentee ballots returned.

My son came in and helped his mom and dad vote. He made sure we did it just right.

Now we’re at home. Our polls are staffed well and its the slow hour. In an hour, I’m taking some Tylenol and heading back out.

Phil Heron, Editor of the Delco Times, on Weldon’s current political/legal troubles:

It still is inexplicable, however, that he has not released “the letter.”

For the past two years, whenever he was asked about the meteoric lobbying career of his daughter Karen and Sexton, Weldon always responded that he voluntarily went to the House Ethics Committee with all the particulars and was given a clean bill of health. More recently he’s said that the committee wrote him a letter closing the case.

Why, then, has he not produced it? With his family and friends under fire and his job on the line, why won’t Weldon release the one piece of paper that could give him an exculpatory boost?

Here’s the thing: Curt Weldon claimed to have a chart that showed that the intelligence community knew about Mohamed Atta and the September 11th hijackers, but was unable to produce it. (See also: Able Danger.)

Next, Curt Weldon claimed to have evidence that he personally knew where the chaches of Iraqi WMD’s were. He had a source, Ali. But he could not produce credible evidence to the military, who surely desired to find the long-sought weapons.

Now he claims he was cleared by the Republican-controlled House ethics board in a letter. And yet he cannot produce the letter.

What we have here is clearly a pattern of claiming to have evidence where it does not exist. I have a hunch that when Curt was a kid, he tried the “Dog ate my homework trick” a lot too.

More reading at PA-7 Watch.

GOP Ostrich, originally uploaded by stormbear.

Congressman Curt Weldon has marched in lockstep with the Bush-Cheney neo-con agenda. He still thinks there are WMD’s in Iraq, and a few months ago he even wanted to make a trip there personally to go dig them up.

But after two decades of putting a cute, little elephant symbol on his lawn signs, Curt has ditched his GOP trappings and is calling himself “an independent fighter.”

Since he won’t use an elephant, maybe Storm Wilson’s ostrich would be more appropriate.

This story seems to slipped past the local news media, but I thought it was worth noting.

For those who aren’t in the loop, there’s a big issue in Delaware County right now about proposed flight path changes for planes leaving the Philly airport. The new paths would allow the airport to increase the number of outgoing flights by allowing many planes to turn for their westward destinations right over central Delco. Currently, they are prohibited from doing so.

Although it is a federal issue under the jurisdiction of the FAA, no candidate has made more political noise about the issue than State Rep. Tom Gannon, PA-161. Through mass mailings, web pages, and meetings, Gannon has annointed himself the FAA gladiator, mostly by telling residents repeatedly that they are likely to experience up to 1000% increases in noise if the flight path changes are put into effect.

Swarthmore College Associate Professor of Engineering Carr Everbach is an area resident and a specialist in acoustical engineering. He has recently called into question how the FAA data has been presented. It turns out that while the noise levels experienced on the ground would obviously go up, the perceived noise level, which is best measured in units called sones, might double at worst.

As a person who lives right under the flight path, I don’t want a lot more planes flying overhead. I expect that ANY elected official for this district would help us to question and challenge the FAA plan. In fact, both of the area’s Republican incumbents (Gannon and Weldon) and the Democratic challengers (Lentz and Sestak) have indicated that they would do exactly that. As far as I’m concerned, it’s an issue for residents, but not an election issue.

But I also don’t want my elected officials hyping the situation out of control. Gannon runs the risk of creating a real estate panic. (And what will the flight path of all those residents be, if they think their houses might end up beseiged with noise in a year?)

Kudos to Swarthmore College student reporter Tally Sharma, who wrote the only piece I’ve found on the issue. From her article in the Swarthmore student newspaper, the Phoenix, here are a few of the choice quotes from Prof. Everbach:

Everbach said that he believed that this misrepresentation of information was merely a result of unawareness. “There will be some embarrassment,” he said. “I would like to believe that it’s a product of ignorance all around”

Everbach did say, however, that some people’s misapprehension of the situation might have allowed the issue to be blown out of proportion. “Based on their incorrect understanding, some politicians such as Tom Gannon and, to an extent, Curt Weldon have circulated [this information] at taxpayers’ expense,” he said.

Truthful telling of the facts is critical if we’re to make informed decisions as citizens. If Gannon were a decent fellow, he’d immediately and publicly correct his error. There’s a noise that I don’t expect to hear.

As my friend and future legislator Bryan Lentz aptly says: “Leaders should not incite fear; they should encourage solutions.”

If the GOP didn’t have fear memes, what would it have? Rep. Weldon’s latest take…

Curt Weldon on CNN: “We either fight them there, or we fight them in the supermarkets and streets here.”

Craig Crawford: “If Bush could not keep the terrorists out of Iraq, how can he keep them out of the local supermarket?”

Joe Sestak, former Navy Vice Admiral and Democratic candidate for US Congress in the PA-7th district, will deliver the Democratic Response to President Bush’s weekly radio address on Saturday, August 19. The topic will be national security.

Sestak’s credentials on national security dwarf those of opponent Curt Weldon’s. 31 years in the Navy. Former head of a Naval carrier battlegroup in Afghanistan. Two years in the White House as Director of Defense Policy on the National Security Council. In his last assignment before retirement, he was the director of the Naval think tank, Deep Blue, which re-imagines the Navy in light of increased threat of terrorist attacks.

Sestak was selected for the address by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. Her recognition was both a great honor for a challenger and a sign of how considerable Joe’s credentials are.

The recorded address will be aired at 11:06 AM on NPR. Listeners in the Philly area can also listen on KYW 1060 AM.

According to the Delco Times, the best criticism that Weldon’s campaign manager could come up with was that this showed that Joe Sestak was “owned” by the Democrats.

No, Mr. Puppio, it shows that he IS a Democrat. For years, the Repubicans have been out of step with America on domestic issues. But on the issue of national security, the Republicans had managed to convinced Americans that they were the party of security, mostly by beating on chests and rattling sabers. Democrats have long known that competent foreign policy, vigorous law enforcement, intelligence, and the world’s strongest military needed to fit together. The non-partisan military does its part, but the civilian leadership of Bush-Cheney and the neocon regime has given us all a taste of what ill-conceived foreign policy will get us.

(And in case you didn’t figure that out, it’s a lot of dead people worldwide, mobilized enemies, increased national debt, and diminished world prestige.)