An Antiwar Freshman Leader Faces His Constituents

(Eric Braem - Associated Press)

As for 2008, he has no worries about getting the D-Triple-C's attention this time: He sits front and center on the Dems' priority list.

Field of Dreams I

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A dreamer and a baseball fan, freshman Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) likes to think of the House chamber as a baseball stadium. (Call it the House That the People Built.) In one of his more bleary-eyed moments during the raucous, round-the-clock shout-fest that marked the waning hours before adjournment last week, Cohen dreamed it and they came, one Jew after another. This dream team formed -- for the first time anyone can recall -- a Jewish section.

Cohen notes that Congressional Black Caucus members often sit together in the "lower box seats, so to speak," while Blue Dog Coalition members take seats in center field and some of the Hispanic Caucus members stake out the "upper deck, in kind of right-center field, if you take it from home plate being the rostrum."

So during that late night, Cohen grabbed a seat near a voting box in left field. Rep. Steve Rothman (D-N.J.) sat next to him. Soon John Yarmuth (D-Ky.) and Steve Kagen (D-Wis.) joined them. Next came Paul Hodes (D-N.H.), Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) and Steve Israel (D-N.Y.). Before they knew it, two more Jewish congressmen, Robert Wexler (D-Fla.) and Gary Ackerman (D-N.Y.), sat down. When Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) came by, Cohen joked, "I told her she couldn't sit with us because we were being Orthodox. She had to sit in the back row."

"It was like the Jewish section," he marveled in his thick Memphis accent. "It was the first time we'd had that. And we had some laughs."

Will the laughs continue in a newfound Jewish tradition when the House reconvenes next month? Probably not, Cohen concedes. "I think it will be when God decides that we should, and it'll probably mostly be on Friday nights."

Field of Dreams II

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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and her GOP counterpart, Minority Leader John Boehner (Ohio), have their obvious policy differences and were equally resolved in their opposite reactions to Barry Bonds's record-breaking homer Tuesday night.

"Barry Bonds etched his name into baseball's history books and took his rightful place among the sport's immortals," Pelosi said in a statement about her district's controversial home run king. She wasn't at the stadium to see Bonds hit No. 756, breaking Hank Aaron's record, in the fifth inning against the Washington Nationals. But she declared: "It was a great night for baseball and a great night for San Francisco -- the crowd went wild. It was particularly exciting to see Willie Mays embrace him on the field and see Hank Aaron congratulate him on the Jumbotron. As a season ticket holder, I am particularly glad it happened on the Giants' Italian night."

Boehner, a Cincinnati Reds fan, was less thrilled. Asked by radio host Frank Beckmann of WJR in Detroit whether Bonds should have an asterisk next to his name in the history books because of alleged steroid use, Boehner replied: "Absolutely, absolutely. I'm a big Hank Aaron fan. He did it the right way -- he earned it."