On His 1st Day, A Congressman Assumes His Brown-Skinned Colleagues Are Foreigners. It Gets Awkward.

Freshman Rep. Curt Clawson (R-Florida) came to his first day on the House Foreign Affairs Committee trying to lay down the law using his impressive experience of being the boss-guy everyone had to listen to in his private-sector job. He didn’t realize he was speaking to senior U.S. officials from the State Department and Commerce Department even though they were introduced as such by one of the chairmen. Nisha Biswal and Arun Kumar were exceedingly gracious about the whole thing, I must say!