Gus Bilirakis in the News

In order to do our jobs here at GusWatch, we are signed up for "Google Alerts." For those of you not familiar with Google Alerts, they are a way to be notified, via email, whenever a certain name or phrase appears in the news. Google Alerts for Gus Bilirakis usually come into my email box, on average, three days a week. On those days, I may get three or four alerts of the same story when it is published in different media outlets or on blogs.

For the past two weeks, Gus Bilirakis has been in the local news for hosting a couple of workshops on identity theft. Good for him.

But much more common are stories like the one I got today. I would say 60-75% of the coverage of Gus is on Greek-related issues. Here is the link to the latest, along with an excerpt:

"Friday a Kiev issue of the Kommersant daily reported that Denisenko met with Republican Senators George Voinovich and Sam Brownback, and Gus Bilirakis, the head of the support group to the Greek Orthodox Church in the House of Representatives."

A few thoughts came to mind as I read this:

1. "...head of the support group to the Greek Orthodox Church in the House of Representatives." WTF? Support group for a church in Congress? Is this the best use of Gus' time in Washington?
2. If Gus Bilirakis puts that much time and energy into supporting the Greek Orthodox Church in Congress, shouldn't his votes reflect his religious values? If so, then why did he vote against giving more poor children healtchare through the S-CHIP program?
3. Is this another example of Gus pandering to one of his two big constituencies (Greeks and veterans) while ignoring the rest of us?