13-year-old names names; Warner gets the message

Members of Congress are used to getting ripped in the press, but they’re not used to being called out by an eighth-grader.

That’s what happened when the offices of Sens. John Warner (R-Va.) and Jim Webb (D-Va.) didn’t respond to Ian Scott Wilson’s requests for interviews and information about the recent scandal at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

The reports of substandard medical care for military officers hit close to home for Wilson, who has an older brother serving in Iraq. Wilson was so moved that he set out to make a short film about the issue.

Seeking more information about Walter Reed, Wilson contacted the White House, the Pentagon and every member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, but got no response.

An astute Wilson then tried his representatives in Congress, showing up at the offices of Rep. Tom Davis (R-Va.), Warner and Webb.

Davis’s staff supplied Wilson with hearing transcripts and other background materials. He got nothing, however, from Warner or Webb.

So Wilson called them out in his film, “When the Boys Come Home,” which earlier this month nabbed first prize in C-SPAN’s “StudentCam” contest.  

Under the Dome wanted to get to the bottom of the senators’ snub of a 13-year-old constituent, so we called them last Wednesday morning to get comment.

We also wanted to talk to Wilson, a teenager who exhibited boldness in a town filled with operatives who regularly stab people in the back — but only under the cloak of anonymity.

During our phone interview with Wilson Wednesday afternoon, the youngster said there was another call coming in and answered the other line.

After a moment, Wilson clicked over and asked, “Can you call back in about five or 10 minutes? It’s Senator Warner’s office.”

We later found out that John Ullyot, spokesman for Warner, apologized to Wilson for not responding and said the senator would be interested in meeting the young filmmaker.

Warner cleared his schedule Friday afternoon to meet Wilson and his family. The local media was alerted and presto, it made the 11 o’clock news.

Wilson also appeared on “Fox and Friends” over the weekend to talk about his film. Davis called in to the show and congratulated him.

Meanwhile, Ullyot told Under the Dome that Wilson’s initial request never made it to the senator, pointing out the office gets thousands of pieces of mail every week.

“We work very hard as a staff to respond to constituents, and this one fell through the cracks,” he said.

The freshman Webb, a former secretary of the Navy who knows a thing or two about healthcare for veterans, played it differently than Warner.

Wilson still hasn’t heard from Webb’s office; neither has Under the Dome.

But Wilson doesn’t hold a grudge: “I know they’re busy and I’m just a kid,” he said.

Issa, master poleholder

There are many ways to describe Rep. Darrell Issa (Calif.). He’s ambitious. He’s a Republican. And he’s a poleholder.

Issa added the last item to his résumé on Saturday during a performance by pilot Sean Tucker at the Joint Service Open House at Andrews Air Force Base.

During his stirring cameo, Issa raised and held a pole and the aircraft flew underneath the ribbon connecting the poles, cutting the ribbon in half.

New-age DLC dumps glossy

When former Rep. Harold Ford Jr. (D-Tenn.) took the helm of the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) after losing his Senate bid last November, he declared, “It is time to put the NEW back in New Democrat.”
 

He wasn’t kidding. Ford made the statement in the cover story of the April issue of Blueprint, the DLC’s glossy bimonthly magazine that has served as a platform for New Democrats to influence their party since September 1998.

But last week, Ford and the DLC decided Blueprint was old media and discontinued it, replacing it with a new website called IdeasPrimary.com.

The website, which Ford described as “an online laboratory of ideas” and a platform for new policy proposals for the 2008 presidential campaign, will be run by Marc Dunkelman, former chief of staff to Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) He replaces longtime Blueprint editor Peter Ross Range.

 “Blueprint has been a great publication, but taking the same ideas and putting them directly on the Web will have more impact than going to all the trouble of printing and sending the magazine,” DLC President Bruce Reed said last week. He added, “Most of the political discourse is taking place on the Web now, anyway.”

 Reed, who was President Clinton’s domestic policy adviser and policy director of the DLC when Clinton was chairman in 1990-91, said Blueprint was bankrolled by New York businessman Bernard Schwartz, “who continues to be a generous supporter.”

Triathlon is no sweat for Fenty

Washington, D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty did quite well in the Columbia Triathlon in Columbia, Md., on Sunday. And his security detail got quite a workout as well.

Three black Lincoln Continentals and as many as six security agents followed the mayor as he raced the 41-kilometer bike course and 10-kilometer running course (It’s hard to see how a guard could protect Fenty during the first leg of the course, the 1.5-kilometer swim.)

Hizzoner was speedy on Sunday, finishing one of the toughest triathlons on the East Coast in 2:37:06, according to official race results. He finished the swim in 27 minutes; completed the hilly and technical bike course — during the one hour that it rained — in 1:18:52; and ran a blistering 46:31 for the final leg.

Albert Eisele and Jonathan E. Kaplan contributed to this page.