My first 2 weeks as a Missionary For Life have me
stationed at the Capitol Hill working with Congressman Andy Harris of the First
District of Maryland. The majority of my days consist of answering calls and
putting the Chief of Staff’s business cards into a contact sheet on excel. It
has been very mundane and boring work, but it has opened up my eyes to the real
politics that run our great nation. Being on the Hill, I have not got a lot of
opportunities to talk to folks about abortion. My congressman is pro-life, of
course, but I haven’t had the opportunity to discuss the topic with many
people.
The legislative assistant (LA) that
handles pro-life issues for the congressman knows that I am very pro-life and
has given me several tasks that deal with the issue. She handed me Live Action’s
new investigative report on the illegal activities at Planned Parenthood and I
am currently about half way through reading it. It is appalling! She also
delegated me the task of looking through various pro-life and abortion bills
that are in the House and making a chart on whether the congressman is on their
co-sponsor list or not. The same LA has allowed me to attend a Values Action
Team meeting with her. The VAT meeting consisted of various other conservative
republican congressional staffers and the head of government affairs for the
Family Research Council. In the meeting we discussed the recent report on
Planned Parenthood, abortion bills, sanctity of marriage bills, and freedom of
speech and religion issues. At that meeting I was made aware of the fact that
the congressman I am interning for is working on an anti-cloning bill, which of
course, is pro-life related in the fact that in the process of human cloning,
many embryos will be killed during the research. I received an invitation at
the VAT meeting to attend a lunch lecture hosted for March For Life and the
American Conservative Union entitled, “Women Know Best – Conservative Solutions
Work”. I am very excited to attend this meeting this coming Tuesday and will
undoubtedly discuss it in my next entry.
Of the two weeks I have been in the
congressman’s office, there have been several hot topics amongst the
constituents calling his office. The first week it was the whole Bergdahl
terrorist swap and the second week it was the Eric Cantor and Child Immigration
Amnesty thing. I have always heard people talk about calling or writing
congressmen, but I never knew people actually did that. I am now convinced that
the people that do repeatedly call their congressmen have absolutely nothing
else better to do with their time. They just call and rant and rave and
complain. I have lost count of all the “Impeach Obama!” calls I have gotten. I
take back what I said about all the calls being long rants, I’ve only had like
three of those so far, but they are the main ones that stick out in my mind.
Today we had one crazy lady call talking about how she was kidnapped and
drugged and brainwashed by the Chinese using UK Ultra in 1978. She was going on
about how these kids coming into the US from Central America have been kidnapped,
drugged, and brainwashed just like her. She is convinced that these kids will
come and shoot up schools. She went as far as to say that she wouldn’t be
surprised if one of them showed up at one of our costal campaign offices and
shot everyone. She called like four times because she kept forgetting to tell
us things. The Capitol Police and the people in my office have had issues with
her before and have her on a list. So I had the pleasure and honor of transferring
her call directly to the Capitol Police when she called back for the fourth
time. One of the staffers at the costal campaign office said the police had to
escort her home because of that. Although, at the DC office we were unable to
tell if she was joking or not.
Sadly, this week I was out for three
days with a bad cold. I was willing to come into work, but the staff at the
office asked me not to come in until I was not coughing because we are all
packed in the office in tight quarters and they don’t want to risk others
getting sick. This was odd and different for me because I am used to school and
my work back home wanting you to come in even if you were a little sick.
During my sick days, I did what any
college student in this day and age would do, I curled up in bed with my ipad
and watched Netflix. I got caught up on the third season of BBC’s Sherlock
series and I started watching House of Cards. I find it funny that I started
watching House of Cards while working on the Hill for a congressman, because
the whole show is about a corrupt and manipulative congressman. A lot of the
terms thrown around in the show are what I hear at the office every day and a
lot of the locations in the show are exactly where I am on Capitol Hill.
Although, the atmosphere and people are far less evil, rude, and mean…..or at
least they seem to be that way on the surface.
Anywho, I guess that’s it for my intro blog about my
internship. Stay tuned throughout the summer for more interesting tidbits about
my Summer as a Missionary For Life
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