Representative John Dingell has been in the news a lot as of late. In addition, he’s been getting a lot of criticism. I’ve alway been of the opinion that when it seems like everyone is against you, throw a party. And that’s just what the Honorable Mr. Dingell did.

Each year around this time, the congressman throws what is commonly known as the summer’s biggest blow-out. This past Friday he held his annual Mexican-themed gathering at Ypsilanti’s Automotive Heritage Museum. It’s a yearly chance for all of the area’s politicians to rub elbows and hob-knob with Mr. Dingell as well as each other.

Oh, yeah. The food is free and it’s an open bar.

Even though I only live two and a half blocks from the auto museum, I decided to drive to show my support for Mr. Dingell. Rather than take my economy-sized car, I pulled my 1973 Plymouth Satellite out of mothballs and drove it. While not the most fuel-efficient car, it does have a fair pedigree. Mike Brady drove a Satellite Regent station wagon in the seminal television sitcom, The Brady Bunch. The car was also featured prominently in Adam-12. And of course, the B-52s sang about a Plymouth Satellite going faster than the speed of light in one of their “Rock Lobster”-era hits.

Anyway. I just wanted to show my gratitude for his unwavering support of the auto industry, and to really drive this point home, I placed a brick on the gas pedal and let the car idle all evening long.

Initally I wanted to talk to Mr. Dingell about some of the iniatives he’s been proposing. I had a bunch of hard-hitting questions to ask him. Let’s face it, there are only 435 guys like him in the country and you don’t have this kind of access to a US Representative every day. When I finally got there, I felt bad for him. There were a bunch of other people clinging to him asking their hard-hitting questions. As soon as he had a moment to catch his breath, I decided against hassling him. I thought, if that were me, I’d just want a couple of minutes to down a few margaritas before the next guy jumped me.

So in the end, I decided to let him be. I thought the next best thing to talking to the Man himself was talking to one of his staffers. As soon as I saw one, I was all over him like a local politician on a chafing dish full of steak quesadillas.

The staffer that I know is a great guy. More importantly, he reads the blog and is a big fan. I don’t quite remember if he said that Mr. Dingell read the blog as well, but I’m sure he does. I was also asked to provide more frequent updates. If that’s what Mr. Dingell wants, then I’ll try and comply.

We talked about the cake that Greenpeace delivered to Mr. Dingell’s Ypsilanti office last week. Apparently it was not very moist, but the icing was tasty. Not too sweet. Nice consistency. We talked about eliminating the mortgage interest deduction on McMansions. I think if they are going to arbitrarily pick 3,000 square feet the line without taking into consideration the type of construction, I suggested they just eliminate the deduction on mortgages over $500K since that’s just as arbitrary. Sure there are a lot of $500K homes that are giant, but that’s not a hard and fast rule. We also hit CAFE and the gas tax, and it seems we are aligned on that one too.

I asked if we could get Mr. Dingell…

[ed. note: Content removed at the request of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.]

…you’ll know it all started back here in Ypsilanti.