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Washington journal
By JOHN BALZ, PAUL DE LA GARZA and BILL ADAIR Capitol just can't get enough of Old GloryOn Capitol Hill, American flags are as rare as hearty '64 Bordeaux. Congress just reached a deal with one supplier for 5,000 new flags and an order for 10,000 more flags is expected to be nailed down in the next few weeks. Congress keeps stocks of six sizes of flags and all of them are running behind demands. From Sept. 12-15 the Capitol received about 50,000 flag orders. For Rep. Mark Foley, R-West Palm Beach, the backlog for flags has topped six months. Congressional officials have been so desperate for the Stars and Stripes that they called textile manufactureres to see if any could sew flags from scratch. Metric conundrum stumps mediaHow much is a meter? If you don't know, don't feel bad. It turns out that some of the TV big shots at the Pentagon don't know either. At a briefing last week, Adm. John D. Stufflebeem filled reporters in on the friendly fire that killed three Americans in Afghanistan. He explained that an errant bomb had hit about 100 meters from U.S. Special Forces. A network reporter asked for clarification. "But admiral," he said, "can I ask a little bit more about Jack's question? It's about 70 yards, I believe -- a hundred meters. Isn't that correct?" "No," said the admiral. Then a colleague from the same network chimed in: "A hundred yards." Actually, it's closer to 109 yards. Close up, TV news is not prettyBaseball commissioner Bud Selig got a firsthand look at Washington's aggressive TV photographers last week. The TV photographers are famous for doing whatever is necessary to "get the shot" -- even if they have to block the view of everyone else. After a congressional hearing Thursday night, Selig held a news conference in an empty meeting room. Chairs were set up for the reporters, but the TV photographers stood directly in front of the chairs, which created a human wall that blocked everyone's view. Selig kept craning his head to look around the TV cameras. In the middle of the news conference, a reporter tried to put a microphone on the podium, but he twice knocked off someone else's mike. Selig quipped, "Now I know why people hate people in the electronic media."
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