Representative Dan Burton, then the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, once publicly questioned the use of White House staff, postage, and stationery to answer mail addressed to the cat.
Burton regularly makes headlines with attention-getting stunts. In 1993, he fired a rifle at a "headlike thing" in his backyard in front of a homicide expert to prove his theory that Clinton advisor Vincent Foster did not commit suicide but was murdered and that his body was moved to a Virginia park. In 1995, he wrote Clinton, demanding to know whether taxpayers were footing the cost of stationery and postage for the fan club dedicated to Socks, the first cat. (They were not.)
>Maura Healey