"...because I have big thighs..."

When a kilt-wearing postman named Dean Peterson tries to freshen up the official USPS wardrobe, but has to run the change past conservative leadership first, who wins?

Says Brooks Bennett, executive board member of the letter-carriers union in Washington state, "In Washington and Oregon, I guess we like to see ourselves as being progressive. Things get a hearing here that might not in other places."

But at the national convention, reception was frosty from the decision-makers. At one point, Peterson was so nervous that he mistakenly said "UPS" when he meant "USPS," for United States Postal Service. That got him roundly booed.

The committee in charge of the resolution nixed the kilts, saying there wasn't much demand for them.

Peterson says it was the older members — "the fuddy-daddies," he calls them — who didn't like the kilts. He says he could see them staring at him as he wore a kilt on the convention floor.

"All you could see was dirty looks."

He vows to return with his resolution at the next national convention in 2010.

So, who wins? Why, parliamentary procedure, of course.