FROST V. SESSIONS

The congressional race in Dallas between long-time incumbent Martin Frost (D), whose district disappeared in the Tom Delay-engineered redistricting fiasco, and Republican Pete Sessions, a four-term Congressman, just gets uglier and uglier. Sessions, the famous campaign-sign thief, is running (ad nauseum) an ad featuring school children chanting, "It's only wrong if I get caught" as their teacher instructs them in the so-called campaign ethics of Martin Frost. Citing Frost's "campaign rally featuring a convicted child molester" (Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul and Mary fame) and Frost's payment of an $8,000 fine (resulting from a suit filed by Sessions last month complaining the font size in a Frost mailer was too small) as evidence that he "breaks the rules and won't stop until he's caught," the Sessions radio ad is playing all over the Dallas airwaves.

Martin Frost was my Congressman for a number of years until we moved across town 18 months ago, shortly before his district disappeared, thanks to Delay and other Texas Republicans. I've met and talked with him several times over the years and used to proudly sport a Vote Frost sign in our front yard. Until the redistricting, he was virtually guaranteed re-election as a popular incumbent who served his constituents very well while having a significant impact in Washington. This kind of sleazy, distortion-packed advertising hopefully will disgust voters -- it's evidence that Sessions' oppo research couldn't turn up anything worse on the squeaky-clean Frost. I've sent complaining e-mails to the local radio stations running the Sessions ad, but since the two stations he's targeting boast programming that includes between them Dr. Laura, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, and other right-wing yahoos, I don't expect they'll have any effect.

The Bushies, starting with George I, have so lowered the bar of American politics, it's getting too low to crawl under.