Happy Friday Y'all!

Its a rainy morning on Capitol Hill! Luckily I have my obnoxious bright yellow rain coat to keep me dry! The Speaker headed to his home district in Ohio last night, so the office is very relaxed without the big man on campus.

I've had a very exciting week! Yesterday I had the privilege to to go to one of the hearings about the IRS scandal! Chairman Issa and Deputy Chair Cummings of the Government Reform and Oversight Committee ran the hearing. The hearing was focused on the wasteful spending by the IRS at conferences over the last few years. There has been scandal after scandal with the IRS lately. This issue specifically has fallen to the back burner because of Tea Party targeting, but it is a huge issue that needed to be addressed. The witnesses included Faris Fink -- the IRS official who played Spock in this not so informational IRS employee training video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxU6n4pAnrU . Rep. Issa and Rep. Cummings absolutely ripped Fink apart about this 2010 employee conference. Issa insisted that Fink's employee's were guilty of tax evasion and Cummings howled about the conference basically stealing tax money from the low-income constituents of his home district. Safe to say this was a very rousing and exciting hearing to witness.

When I returned to the office from the hearing it was crazy busy. The Speaker was in and out of the office the whole morning for meetings. In the midst of these meetings, Representative Aaron Schock came by my desk to use the Speaker's balcony. After he asked me if it was alright to go out, he gave me a little wink. Obviously I died and went to heaven. For those of you who don't know why, this is Congressman Schock:

At the end of the day all the interns gathered in the Speaker's Conference room to meet with the Cheif of Staff, Mike Sommers. This was a really unique opportunity to sit down with a man who has accomplished so much. I look up to him and admire what he does. I know Mike very well because he walks past my desk probably 50 times a day to go into the Speaker's office, but it was so interesting to hear his life story story of "started from tha bottom, now he here".

I'm ready for an exciting weekend of taking the ACT, sight seeing and meeting up with friends from Cleveland! Happy Friday everyone!

God Bless America,
Ali