News-Record.com

An entry on Congressman Howard Coble was prematurely posted last night without context or a response. Here is what it was supposed to say. I'm sorry for any confusion this may have caused.

This e-mail came from a reader today:

"I am curious as to why you refuse to hold Howard Coble accountable. Last week before the House adjourned it voted on 23 critical bills, including that security bill. Howard was AWOL for all of it because he decided to begin his vacation early. Yet, do I read a headline about how we got ZERO representation in Congress? No I do not.

"It is time for you people to step and do your jobs. Too bad if you like him or think he's a nice guy or want to give him your usual pass. The fact is he is a horrible representative for his district. His "legendary" constituent services are no different than anyone would do. And he has been incompetent at everything in which he was put in charge when the Republicans controlled Congress.

"Let's start telling the truth."

We have been critical of Coble and other congressmen and senators in Washington when we felt it was warranted. We've also praised them.

We especally took Coble to task a few years ago for defending the internment of Japanese Americans. We praised his willingness to break ranks with other Republicans on the Iraq war.

We criticized him recently for not following through on that stance in more recent votes.

And we have longed for him to have more than token Democratic competition for re-election.

That said, we also endorsed him in the last election.

We have written editorials and columns about the work of Mel Watt, Coble, Elizabeth Dole, Brad Miller and others. And we'd like to write even more about the day-to-day efforts of our representatives in Washington.

But we don't have a reporter or editorial writer in Washington, so we don't cover them to that extent.