Wes Allison and Elena Lesley’s glowing, pandering, fawning fluff “news” piece in the St. Petersburg Times is so embarrassingly obsequious to Florida Republican politician Ginny Brown-Waite that their words are almost painful to read:

It is 10 a.m. on a perfect Friday. The old soldiers and their wives shuffle into the council room at City Hall, clutching each others’ arms while they find seats up front.

It is an old story, particularly in this part of west-central Florida, where in many communities veterans outnumber children: service records lost over the years, the hunt through the federal bureaucracy to find them, the awarding of honors for heroics in World War II or Korea or Vietnam, before it really is too late.

For all the weighty issues rocking Washington these days, a politician can do no better than excel at what’s dryly known as constituent services — finding lost Social Security checks, clearing up confusion over Medicare or, as she is today, handing out medals. Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite is an expert.

She walks in briskly a few minutes after most are seated, a matter-of-fact and tenacious woman who today offers bright smiles and a tender touch as she works her way down the rows.

“So they call you Bill?” she asks William Lynn, 82, of Leesburg, who fought in World War II.

Aw, isn’t that sweet: Ginny Brown-Waite helps out the old soldiers and their shuffling wives! Allison and Lesley depend on the assumption that their readers are completely ignorant of modern congressional politics. Even the casual observer of the U.S. House of Representatives knows that every member of Congress has paid staff and a number of days every month dedicated to dealing with “constituent issues”: missing checks, problems with access to government officials, family visa emergencies and the like. EVERY one of the 435 members of the House takes care of these issues. These “reporters,” who have a transparent Brown-Waite promotion agenda, want you to believe that Brown-Waite is somehow different or special for fulfilling these expectations. The truly exceptional news story would report on the extremely rare politician that does not do so.

No, the real distinctions between members of Congress regard directions in policy priorities and decisions. Regarding her policy priorities and decisions, Allison and Lesley make a wildly counterfactual claim in their headline: “Brown-Waite’s No One’s Rubber Stamp.” But the uncomfortable fact, stuffed way down low in their own article, is that

her rankings with the Christian Coalition, the American Conservative Union, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and most other conservative groups are typically over 90 percent. She has consistently supported the president’s tax cuts, banning gay marriage and drilling in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Ginny Brown-Waite has only crossed partisan lines to support one out of fourteen progressive policy initiatives tracked by Irregular Times. She voted to give a Bush administration bureaucrat the ability to nullify any law without judicial review (H.R. 418). She voted to allow organizations to engage in religious discrimination when hiring using our taxpayer funds (H.R. 27). She’s signed on to a constitutional amendment that would let government funds be used to proselytize in our public schools (H.J. Res 57). When she didn’t like the way a judge ruled in a case about instituting religious preferences, she tried to pass a law that would nullify the judge’s decisions (H.R. 2862). She voted to gut the Endangered Species Act (H.R. 3824). Brown-Waite has failed to get on board with the legislative initiative to require that electronic voting machines produce a paper trail (H.R. 550). She’s refused to support efforts to end the extraordinary rendition of people overseas so they can be tortured (H.R. 952). Even though she is supposed to represent a district in the multi-ethnic Florida, she’s added her support to a bill that would mandate that official government business be conducted in English only, and presumptively declare that workplaces in the private sector follow these rules too (H.R. 997).

That’s just a sampler of Ginny Brown-Waite’s extreme conservative pattern of voting, right in step with the Republican Bush agenda, inside the DC Beltway. Allison and Lesley want you to pay attention to the old veteran and shuffling, dutiful veteran’s wife in their piece, and then transfer your affection for them onto Rep. Brown-Waite. But don’t pay attention to that old ruse. Instead of watching whose hands Brown-Waite pats, watch what Brown-Waite’s been doing in Washington, DC. The picture isn’t pretty, and it isn’t one of independence. Ginny Brown-Waite IS Bush’s rubber stamp, and this country was not founded on rewards for rubber stamping political followers. It’s time Florida’s 5th District found real independent leadership again. It’s time that Florida’s 5th District picked a new representative.