Baird reverses course; will host town halls

Via Jon DeVore, it turns out that Brian Baird has changed his mind and will now host real, live, town halls this summer.

His constituents should look forward to the five town hall meetings and feel free to participate. And if the kitchen gets a little hot, as we editorialized before, Baird should "(w)ork with the concept that some rowdy crowd behavior will happen and figure out how to best manage it. These are, after all, Baird's meetings...."

Two other fumbles were recovered Wednesday, these of the verbal variety. In his written statement, Baird addressed two inappropriate analogies he had drawn in recent interviews. Last week he labeled as "Brownshirt" in nature much of the recent disruptive behavior at town hall meetings. The next day, Baird dug deeper. He compared the unruly town hall meeting participants with Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh.

Now, though, in both instances, "I regret that and apologize for it."

Good for him. Up until recently, Baird had a solid reputation for engaging his constituents. This is the Brian Baird we know and expect.