THE GALL

Not only does Madam Foxx use the welcome-home ceremony for the 1451st yesterday as a flimsy excuse to duck out of answering questions in Winston-Salem about her legislative record, she chokes up -- twice! -- during her own short remarks in front of the soldiers.

How do you know when Virginia Foxx is being insincere? When she chokes up. It's a dead giveaway. She's famous for fake crying when she feels threatened.

For the record, the ceremony at the high school gymnasium was over before 4 p.m. yesterday. Madam Foxx left the premises soon after 4. She was due in W-S for a 7 p.m. public forum with fellow congressman Mel Watt. She could have gotten there. She chose not to.

What makes this irresponsibility and arrogance all the more galling? She had agreed to appear at the forum at the request of Amy Barnhart, a Salem College senior, who was fulfilling a class project in setting up the town hall program. But what's a student's hard work and expectation to this Foxx woman?

Among the onlookers apparently unimpressed with the Foxx fake emotion yesterday, as well as the Foxx "logic" about this war, was the editorialist for the Watauga Democrat: "Americans are being put into harm's way every day in a war that has yet to yield any real connection with the fight against world terrorism."

Say it again: There's no real connection between our losses in Iraq and the fight against world terrorism. There's rather ego, arrogance, and lies. Virginia Foxx OWNS all of it, no matter how much she chokes up.