2007 house journal index of days - Maryland General Assembly

Feb. 12, 2007 Maryland House of Delegates 821
JOINT COMMITTEE ON TECHNOLOGY OVERSIGHT:
Hon. Brian J. Feldman (House Chairman)
Hon. Kumar P. Barve
Hon. Sue Hecht
Hon. Michael L. Vaughn
Hon. Mary Roe Walkup
Read and adopted.
Mr. Speaker, Fellow Delegates, Guests:
By Order,
Mary Monahan
Chief Clerk
LINCOLN’S BIRTHDAY ADDRESS
Delegate A. Wade Kach
Baltimore County
On this day 198 years ago—when I was first elected to the legislature—a future President
was born to a pair of uneducated farmers in Nolin Creek, Kentucky. And as they say, he
must have been an ugly baby. In fact, as described by an anonymous British writer in the
June 1, 1862, edition of the New York Sunday Mercury, Abraham Lincoln would
probably not have impressed the three-judge panel on American Idol. According to this
account:
“To say that he is ugly is nothing…Fancy a man six feet high and thin out of
proportion..... Add to this a head—coconut-shaped and somewhat too small—covered
with rough uncombed hair that stands out in every direction…with two rows of large,
white teeth and a nose and ears which have been taken by mistake from a head of twice
the size.”
Surely, if Mary Todd Lincoln were alive today she would have insisted that her husband
go in for an Extreme Makeover. I mean, is it any wonder Lincoln said, “Common looking
people are the best in the world?” He went on to explain, “That is the reason the Lord
makes so many of them.” Of course, it’s also the reason we have so many in the
legislature—not me though. Indeed for Lincoln, looking or even being common was not a
liability, nor was it a glib talking point used to propel a man to higher office. He presided
over a time in our history in which common men and women made uncommon sacrifices
for the common good.