Peace

I was there!----------------------------->
Okay, so I am not in this picture, but I was sitting to the right of this picture in the gallery upstairs, during this joint session (both the House and the Senate) of Congress to hear the address by King Abdullah II, the King of Jordan, talk about Peace in the Middle East. This was close to the same kind of security associated with the State of the Union address, because minus the President, all the same people were there. So how does an intern like me get invited to a big event like this? That is a great question. Actually, again, it is all because of a personal relationship. A former Minnesotan, who still works on the hill, is a friend of a friend. A few weeks ago she contacted me and said that she read this blog, and long story short, she called me about 8 minutes before it started, which gave me just enough time to get up to the gallery level and into the door during the final standing ovation before King Abdullah II spoke. (So, if you're reading this, THANK YOU!) It lasted just under an hour, and I was just a few hundred feet from almost all members of Congress as well as Vice President Cheney. The process was made faster when a staffer for the Ag. Committee told me to "lose my phone" for the time being, allowing me to walk right through all the metal detectors, and show my ticket to a Secret Service agent.
What King Abdullah II spoke about, was ending the Palestinian-Israeli tensions, because to him, without it no other conflicts would be solved. It was an interesting speech, as most people were expecting it to be about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

After I was done with my fanfare of the day, I was a bodyguard for close to 3 hours. The Conservation, Credit, Energy and Research Subcommittee held a hearing about financing renewable fuels. The first table held representatives from the Departments of Energy and Agriculture, and the state of Pennsylvania. During this time, the room was packed with press and the public, because when administration is around, everyone wants to hear. The second group was people from the industry, so half the room left, and I was able to let in the people who had been waiting a couple of hours (an hour before plus an hour of the hearing) to hear what was left. Another dilemma arose, as the canola reception (one of the best on the hill as I'm told) wanted to start setting up at 3:30, while our 1:00 hearing looked to be getting done by four. They started setting up outside, and the reception still went off without a hitch and the food that I tasted was very good (they basically had a wide variety of food and said "see, you could use canola oil to cook all of this".)

I luckily did not have to stay late to set up (others did) for our hearing tomorrow morning, which is on feed costs for livestock under the Livestock, Dairy and Poultry Subcommittee's jurisdiction. It will again be a packed house at 10:00 am, featuring a Deputy Secretary from the USDA as well as panel from the industry and academia, including one from a world-class institution, the University of Minnesota. His name is Gerald C. Shurson, and he is a professor of swine nutrition and management. I hope to try to sneak in, but will most likely have door duty. He has done some research on DDGS and will be the only academic on the panel tomorrow (the rest are from animal organizations). After that, I think the pace of the week will be very downhill, to a nice quiet 60 degree weekend.