Hightower Lowdown

Time for the Gooberhead Award—given periodically to someone in the news whose mouth is running 100 miles per hour... but who forgot to put their brains in gear. This month's Goober is Rep. Tom DeLay, the Republican whip in the U.S. House. He's all whipped up about "saving" 6 year old Elian Gonzalez from that dastardly Fidel Castro in Cuba. Elian is the center of a highly politicized immigration case cum tug-of-war between his dad and grandmothers who want him to return home and the anti Castro Cuban exiles in Miami who want to keep him in the U.S. as a political trophy.

The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, however, has sided with Elian's dad. That's when our man DeLay poked his nose into the matter, introducing legislation that would—presto chango!—make the 6 year old a U.S. citizen, meaning the INS would have no say in the matter and the Cuban exiles could keep him, his dad be damned.

Just months ago DeLay was pounding his chest and patting House Republicans on the back for passing something called the "Fathers Count Act," which he said is "designed to prevent the unfortunate cycle of children being raised in fatherless homes." He invoked George Washington and other Founding Fathers to argue that childhood is not complete unless boys and girls are with their dads. The Fathers Count Act included a federal grant program to help churches encourage fathers to live with their kids. Apparently, for DeLay, this fatherhood and family values stuff only goes so far . . . and certainly not to Elian Gonzalez's dad in Cuba.