Having watched-- with a great deal of pride-- Barney Frank's congressional career for nearly 3 decades, it's with a real sense of awe that John and I are hosting him live today at Crooks and Liars. I hope you'll join us in the live comments forum to get to know the man who Roll Call rated the 7th most powerful member of the House, the man who Out just named the 5th most powerful gay person in America, and who is surely rated by Republican members in Congress as the person they least want to tangle with.

In fact the Chairman's unflappability gave me the idea of marrying his images to a classic Tom Petty song, "I Won't Back Down," something he has earned the reputation for never doing. Please enjoy the music, but also enjoy the Chairman looking very much like he's about to give Fox-thug Bill O'Reilly a coronary as Bill-O the Clown's attempts to ambush and bully him fall dismally flat. Last month when a barely literate obstructionist Missouri Congressman with a very fancy toupee attempted to read a staffer's talking points blaming the Bush-Republican economic meltdown on Barney, the Chairman let loose with a rebuttal that Todd Akin is probably still puzzling over and trying to comprehend. When congressional staffers vote in the semi-annual Washingtonian poll, somehow Todd Akin doesn't get mentioned but the Chairman always comes in at the #1 brainiest, the #1 funniest and always in the top 3 hardest working and top 3 most eloquent.

Chairman Frank, looking down the roster of your committee it looks like a pretty unruly group. I mean you're legendary in Washington for working well and constructively even with die-hard conservatives like Spencer Bachus from Alabama. But he seems a lot saner than some of the real hard core obstructionists and extremists, I mean Virginia Foxx? Patrick McHenry? Michele Bachmann?? Are these serious legislators trying to solve our country's problems or are these partisan troublemakers looking to score political points?

Wed, 04/08/2009 - 12:47 — BarneyFrank:

First, let’s not make a bad situation worse than it is – Patrick McHenry and Michele Bachman do sit on the Financial Services Committee, but Virginia Foxx is not one of those guarding this particular chicken coop. As to the very conservative Members who do serve on the Committee, excessive partisanship is part of the motivation, but even more prominent is their passionate commitment to a very extreme form of conservatism. This hard lined ideological rigidity according to which the market is never in need of intervention and regulation is in all cases to be opposed is what keeps them from participating in a constructive way in our work. When you hear Members of the Committee condemn the socialist tendencies of the President and the failure of the President and his appointees to show any understanding of the capitalist system, and you realize that they are talking about George Bush, you get sense of how removed they are from reality.