And so it begins...

Two of the most influential and destructive politicians of our time began their elective careers on this day in 1979:  Newt Gingrich and Dick Cheney.  Cheney had already been in DC for a decade at this point, serving in the Nixon and Ford administrations, most notably as Ford's Chief of Staff after a palace coup that elbowed Henry Kissinger out of the way.  Gingrich had been a professor at West Georgia College.  But it was in 1979 that they first became elected officials as freshman congressmen.  We're still paying for their sins today.