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§ California Congressman Bill Thomas, the Chairman of the powerful Ways and
Means Committee, gets The Punk of The Week Award. Thomas showed he is a true
patriot when in an act of pure pettiness he cost a hard-working American his
job. Reacting to a televised interview with Thomas, Los Angeles Times
sportswriter Brian Robin shot off a nasty email to Thomas. Robin covers high
school sports and golf for the paper's Ontario, CA edition. Robin,
admittedly, made the grand mistake of sending the email from his LATimes.com
account (he says his own email server was down). Robin made no mention of
his profession in the email, signing it simply, "Brian Robin, Lancaster,
CA." Thomas' office later called Robin to confirm he worked for the paper.
Not long after, Robin was called before his superiors, suspended and then
eventually fired for violating corporate policy of using company resources
for personal use.

The Tribune-owned Times had every right to fire Robin for violating company
policy, that is if the company fires every other person who uses the
company's email server or phones for personal use. But it's doubtful The
Times adheres to this policy and thus the paper, in my opinion, kowtowed to
a government official and spit in the face of freedom of speech. It is
likely that Thomas, or his staffers, put pressure on The Times and the paper
dumped Robin to avoid a bigger problem. "I would love to be able to confront
Bill Thomas and ask him why he or his staff are so thin-skinned and ask them
why they did this to my career and my family. And I'd also like to ask them
if they'd have contacted the Times if the e-mail had been some complimentary
thing. All I did was exercise my right of free speech, and it got completely
blown out of hand," Robin told LA Weekly.

Thomas' actions are pure evil and can't be justified. He ratted someone out
to their employer because they expressed their opinion. I guess this is what
that TIPS program will be all about. Imagine losing your job because of an
email you sent to an elected PUBLIC SERVANT. Thomas doesn't seem to realize
he works for me, you and Brian Robin and that by representing citizens,
every single action and statement of his that affects the public is subject
to scrutiny. I don't know much about Thomas, but this incident suggests to
me that he's a little turd of a man. A spineless little fart who abused his
power and needs to be nailed for it (I suggest contacting the House
Committee on Standards and Ethical Conduct). Bill Thomas epitomizes
everything that is wrong with our government. Hey Bill, I write for a
newspaper, are you going to contact my editors because I wrote this? Let's
see if you can get two people fired, jerkoff."