Jeff Dufour and Patrick Gavin, The Examiner
2007-02-28 08:00:00.0
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Jeff Dufour and Patrick Gavin cover people, power and politics in the beltway each weekday. Email them at yan@dcexaminer.com .

TSA rules make Rehm scream

At the moment, WAMU talk show host Diane Rehm isn’t a huge fan of the Transportation Security Administration’s rules, namely the one that requires all carry-on liquids and gels to be placed in 3-ounce bottles (anything larger has to be checked).

“When you put everything in the same little dumb plastic bottles in order to get on the airplane,” Rehm told Yeas & Nays, “then mistakes can be made, and that’s what unfortunately happened to me.”

Rehm was in her hotel room in Oklahoma City Friday, preparing to head to the airport and catch a flight back to the District. With her were three identical plastic spray bottles: One for her contact lens cleaner, one for her contact lens rinse and one for her perfume (Blue Grass by Elizabeth Arden, her perfume of the last 40 years, in case you were curious). She purchased these bottles a few months ago in order to comply with the TSA’s requirements.

“I just picked the wrong bottle and sprayed the cologne onto my contact lens and put the contact lens into my eye,” Rehm said. “I’ve never had such pain in my life.” Ninety percent of Rehm’s epithelium (the layer of cells that covers the cornea’s surface) was burned instantly. The pain made it difficult for Rehm to get the contact lens out and her left eye began to swell shut.

Rehm headed to a hospital in Oklahoma City but grew frustrated with the lethargic pace of the waiting room and insisted on returning home rather than going to an emergency room. She headed to a pharmacy, chatted with the pharmacist, washed her eye out and headed to the airport. By the time her plane landed in D.C., her eye was completely swollen shut.

Rehm headed to a local doctor on Saturday, who gave her a special contact lens that shields the cornea so healing can take place. It is possible for her eye to heal completely, but Rehm’s not sure how long it’ll take. She trudged into work Monday to do her show, but took Tuesday off in order to recuperate.

“I’m reading with one eye,” Rehm said. “So it’s very distracting.”

As of this writing, Rehm said she hopes to be long enough into her recovery to head back to work today.

No ‘slam dunk’ jokes, please

Heat and pressure go hand-in-hand, so it was a natural fit when the 2006 NBA World Champion Miami Heat descended Tuesday upon the White House — a place well-accustomed to pressure.

And the Heat proved why its home state of Florida went for President Bush during the past two presidential elections.

“I voted for you,” said Heat coach Pat Riley, who, as usual, sported his slicked-back hairstyle that has apparently caught on with presidential wannabe Mitt Romney.

“I think you’re doing a wonderful job,” Heat center Shaquille O’Neal told Bush, who returned the compliment: “Standing next to Shaq is an awe-inspiring experience.”

Such other Heat stars as Dwyane Wade, Alonzo Mourning, Gary Payton, Eddie Jones and Antoine Walker were on hand (with the first row of Heat players and employees standing on a platform lower than the president, in order to make the discrepancy in height less goofy-looking for the photo ops, we suspect).

One White House employee told Yeas & Nays that lots of ladies from the West Wing made their way to the East Wing to get a glimpse of the hunky athletes.

Republicans short a few rogues in their gallery?

The congressional GOP must be on the way back up, thanks to, what one member called the purge of “stranglers, thieves and pedophiles.”

At a book discussion Monday night at the National Press Club, political language guru Frank Luntz, who often advises Republicans, said that, last fall, “leadership made me apologize for saying they were in trouble” heading into the elections.

That’s when Rep. Michael Burgess, R-Texas, piped up from the back of the room.

“You upset the stranglers, thieves and pedophiles,” he said to much laughter.

Luntz is promoting his first book, “Words that Work,” and said that Sen. Barack Obama’s ability to connect with voters is like nothing he’s seen since Bobby Kennedy’s presidential run in 1968.

Gore’s bicoastal appeal

Let it not be said that Al Gore’s appeal is limited to the Left Coast.

New York Magazine and Snow Queen vodka (Kazakhstan’s favorite) threw an Oscar-viewing party in Manhattan Sunday night. We hear that the crowd — which included REM’s Michael Stipe, actors Liev Schreiber and Josh Charles, Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and New York Magazine’s editor in chief Adam Moss — went wild when Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” won Best Documentary Feature.

Marking their territory

Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Colo., a former veterinarian, and the Humane Society’s Wayne Pacelle headlined a Capitol Hill news conference Tuesday to mark “Spay Day” and raise awareness of the need to have pets, ahem, fixed.

Posing with a golden retriever, cocker spaniel and Jack Russell terrier, among others, Allard remarked that spaying and neutering “makes animals more docile and less inclined to wander.”

When asked — inevitably — whether he thought some of his colleagues could benefit from the practice as well, Allard laughed and said he probably shouldn’t comment.

Allard then tried to show the crowd the teeth of the Jack Russell, a famously hyperactive dog, but the pooch wouldn’t hold still (guess he wasn’t docile enough).

“We’re not proposing legislation,” Pacelle said. “This is an awareness-building exercise.”

Sounds a lot like the “non-binding resolution” on Iraq.