kickstarter.

a moment of clarity.

words. 

 "...Lawmakers have ceased to know each other as colleagues, friends and human beings. Because they are in such a hurry to get out of town, there are no more dinners or card games with counterparts from across the aisle. Their spouses don’t socialize, and they don’t know each other’s kids. These were the social lubricants that made Washington function for generations — the casual encounters where the political and the personal mix. (This column was hatched week with Geoff Earle of the New York Post at one such function, a Capitol Hill book party.) The familiarity created goodwill. It’s harder to savage a colleague on the floor if your kids are friends.

Would voters punish politicians who moved their families to Washington? Maybe. But the notion that parents — fathers as well as mothers — want to spend more time with their families carries more weight now than it did a generation ago. Lawmakers could also make a solid case that they were fixing Washington. The place is busted not because members of Congress spend too much time here but because they don’t spend enough time here working on the problems.

...Ryan could do a lot more of this if he extended the House to the five-day workweek most of America endures. And lawmakers, if their families were in Washington, would have no reason to object. They would find the arrangement better for kids, for Congress and for country."

THE WASHINGTON POST: How Paul Ryan can kick-start fixing Congress